Jacob Young Goes to Find Some Better Wheels

Every spectator sport has its own tradeoffs between watching on TV and going to a game in person. And while there are some that can only be truly appreciated live, I personally think television does a pretty good job of portraying baseball at its best. This is a game of inches, and inches can be hard to perceive from the cheap seats.

One exception is exceptional center field defense. By the time the camera angle turns around on a fly ball, the outfielders have already covered dozens of feet in their pursuit of the baseball. To appreciate the speed and timing required to play this position well, you really have to see it live.

There aren’t many guys who can really go out and get it. There definitely aren’t 30 who can hit well enough to stick in a major league lineup every day. Most center fielders, therefore, fall into two camps: Good hitters who can kind of hang but should probably be in a corner, and the genuine article.

“You can stick somebody out there and have them make the plays and not mess it up. And if you’re Aaron Judge, and you hit 40 home runs, or 60 home runs every year, you’re one of the best hitters in baseball, that’s all you’re looking for there,” said Nationals center fielder Jacob Young. “But I think there’s a role for a guy that’s playing elite defense.”

Young is the current major league leader in runs above average among center fielders, with 16. In a WAR context, his defense has been worth 21 runs more than Judge’s this season. He gives all that and more back at the plate, but Young is one of the most dangerous men in the world with a baseball glove on his hand.

“The separator, I think, is getting to balls and making the plays that aren’t supposed to be made,” he said. “You know, cutting down balls in gaps to keep runners off second base. Just the little things that are probably overlooked if fans are just watching a game. But it’s preventing teams from scoring as many runs against you.”

As a 25-year-old rookie who was drafted in the seventh round and bats ninth on a fourth-place team, Young is far from a big name even within the baseball world. It’s pretty normal for a big leaguer like Young — pushing for a Gold Glove while toting around 28 stolen bases and a wRC+ of 82 — to have been a serious prospect on the basis of his speed and defense, but that isn’t really the case. In fact, this is the first full season, dating back to college, in which Young has played more games in center than at any other position.

While talking to Young, I brought up, because I couldn’t help myself, that he’s part of a considerable lineage of great defensive center fielders to come out of the University of Florida, most notably Harrison Bader. But Young was actually primarily an infielder his freshman year, and while he’s not surprised that he’s turned into a top-end defensive center fielder, that’s a recent development.

“Speed has always been a part of [my game], so that usually goes in with defense when you play a premium position,” he said. “Throughout my whole life, I’ve been put in the infield and the corners, so being able to go play center field and make some plays that shouldn’t be made, it’s just kind of been something I’ve always wanted to do. And it’s been fun to see it actually work out.”

When looking for the secret to Young’s defense, we can actually get more specific than “speed.” Among Baseball Savant’s outfield defense metrics is “Jump,” or how much ground a defender travels in the right direction the first three seconds after contact. Young gets 3.8 more feet of a jump than the average outfielder, which is the best figure in baseball. This stat has three components: Reaction, burst, and route. Reaction is the distance covered in any direction in the first 1.5 seconds; burst is distance covered in the 1.5 seconds after that. Route debits the fielder for running more than the distance prescribed by a direct route.

Young is actually not a good route-runner, and his “burst” speed is above average but not league leading. The entire ballgame is in that first 1.5 seconds, in which Young travels 4.6 feet more than the average defender. Nobody else in the entire league is more than 2.4 feet above average.

One way to articulate that quality is to say that Young is a plus-plus runner, with 97th percentile sprint speed, but an off-the-charts accelerator. Except the reverse is true. Here are the six outfielders with a reaction score of 2.0 feet above average or better, and how long it takes them to run 25 feet on the bases.

There are 484 players on this leaderboard. Seeing Carroll sixth is one of those “OK, we know this is actually telling us what we think it should be telling us,” sanity check moments. But Young is basically league average in terms of actually running for 1.5 seconds. That means he’s making up all that ground and then some by being decisive.

I mentioned to Young a conversation I had last summer with now-Orioles prospect Enrique Bradfield Jr., who played against Young when he was at Vanderbilt and Young was at Florida. Bradfield is one of those prospects who played his way into the first round based on his legs and glove, and he explained just how much work goes into learning how to read fly balls.

“Some guys with their swings are very telling as to where they’re comfortable hitting the ball, and where they’re not so comfortable, so sometimes you can cheat a little bit,” Bradfield said. “But at the same time, you really have to use your eyes to get a good jump and a good read.”

So I asked Young, how long does that process actually take? How long does he think about which direction to run before he starts spinning his wheels?

“Honestly, a lot of it’s instantaneous,” Young said. “A lot of it’s pre pitch, getting a read on where the pitch is going to be, the swing that looks like it’s going to be taken. And at that point you just let your instincts take over. The more you think the more it’s going to slow you down.”

Building those instincts takes a lot of work, of course. Young is a devoted batting practice ball-shagger, and even on days when he’s resting his legs, he’ll still go out to the outfield, watch the flight of the ball, and practice taking a first step.

“Just taking a first step in that direction is, I think, huge,” he said. “Just so you’re getting that instantaneous reaction off the bat, and being able to judge which direction or what step you want to take.”

After that, Young has worked on what he calls course correction drills — learning how to change direction without losing any speed. This involves a nine-cone drill, sort of like what football players run at the draft combine, that has helped him focus on and understand his footwork.

Young has clearly spent more time thinking about what makes a great defensive outfielder than most people, so I wanted to hear his thoughts on the metrics that seem to love him so much. There are different approaches to grading outfield defense, involving automated player tracking, human coders, and varying levels of detail when it comes to grading individual plays.

“It’s tough,” Young said. “I think the biggest thing is: Diving plays and sliding plays are great, but it’s about what balls can you keep from getting behind you. That’s huge, just stopping doubles, stopping extra-base hits. Because a lot of times guys can get to a ball and it’s a great sliding catch, but someone else might be able to get to it on their feet and be able to make a throw to second.”

This outlook would seem to mesh with Young’s particular skillset. Because he might not be an efficient route-runner, and his arm actually grades out as average at best, his game is all about getting to the ball as quickly as possible.

That one skill can be worth quite a lot, both in terms of money for the player and wins for the team. But the margin between a 12-year big leaguer like Kevin Kiermaier and a Quad-A guy is thin. The Nationals, at 56-69, have shown encouraging signs of growth this year, but they’re still a ways off from playing meaningful baseball late in the season. That means that Young, as a first-year starter, has to prove to his team that he deserves to stick around through the Nationals’ next pennant race.

For a .249/.309/.321 hitter, that means maintaining a level of defense that has made him an average-or-better overall player despite limited offensive production.

“We’re a young team with even more guys coming up behind us. So you’ve just got to show your value,” he said. “I’m not hitting 20 homers a year. If your value is keeping runs off the board, that’s something you’ve got to take pride in and give yourself 100% at. It’s just showing the coaching staff and owner and front office that you can help this team win games when it matters.”