When the new GTA game drops in two weeks, don’t expect to find Mariners second baseman Cole Young in Vice City.
“I know it can be very addicting,” he laughed on a media call earlier today. “I don’t want to get addicted to that game.”
The disciplined Young has plans for his off-season that don’t involve boosting virtual cars (or, one presumes, collecting fairy bottles). Instead, he plans to build on the season that ended with a significant piece of hardware, as Young took home his first career Gold Glove yesterday.
A steady performer in the minor leagues who made an equally steady climb up to MLB, Young has gotten to where he is largely thanks to his ability to be the same person every day: never getting too high or too low, his gift is his consistency. But even Young couldn’t deny how much he wanted to win the Golden Glove when his name started emerging as a candidate mid-season, a vision that sharpened until becoming reality on Sunday night.
“Just talking with [Mariners infield coach] Perry Hill, we were talking about if I had a chance or not,” said Young the day after his big win. “Honestly, I had no idea. I knew it was a close close run, and I’m super grateful to be in that position.”
Young put himself into that position thanks to the same thing that’s propelled him steadily through his professional career: his top-tier discipline. In identifying areas he could improve in from his rookie year to his sophomore campaign, Young put refining his defense front and center, honing in on it as one of the things over which he could exert the most control in a sport that often feels out of a player’s hands.
“The thing I’ve noticed with defense is that you can control a lot of the stuff,” said Young. “You can control your pre-pitch routine. You can control where you think the ball is going to get hit. There’s just so many controllables on defense.”
Young was maybe a dark horse in the second base race compared to the other candidates, the Royals’ Michael Massey and Chase Meidroth, who went to the playoffs with the White Sox. Both had better numbers by MLB’s in-house stat, Outs Above Average (OAA), a range-based stat, but Massey had significantly fewer games at second base than the other two. However, Young outperformed Meidroth in Sports Info Solutions’ Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), racking up 17 – best among AL second basemen and eighth-best overall – to Meidroth’s 0.
For Young, the award is a partial reward for an off-season spent attacking and correcting the flaws that limited his playing time in his rookie season. Young realized that in baseball, everything begins with the body, and applied himself to both overhauling his conditioning and improving his feet and his hands, using as a basis Perry Hill’s “six Fs” of fielding (feet, field, funnel, footwork, fire, follow).
“The number one thing for me this past off-season was getting my body in good shape, just so I could move better, get my body in better position so I could make difficult plays. That was number one for me,” said Young, who said this year he felt like he could have gone on playing well past the end of the season thanks to a better focus on conditioning and taking care of his body to withstand the rigors of a 162-game season.
“The second one was improving my hands. So I did a lot of stuff I learned from ‘Bone’ (Hill), the six F’s, and worked really hard the past season so when I show up to spring training, I’m able to play every single day. Hold my own on defense and not be a liability.”
Young said he noticed the difference immediately upon arriving at spring training, and that confidence carried forward as he stacked strong innings in spring on both sides of the ball that carried over into the regular season.
“Once I got to spring training, that’s when I noticed – once I got out on the field I just felt like I was able to move better. I felt really good in spring and that gave me some confidence going into the season that I could play every day in the big leagues and be good defensively. But I think it started in spring training, getting a lot of reps and making myself feel comfortable, that’s when I noticed I made a leap forward and it gave me a bunch of confidence.”
That confidence was hard-fought and built over the off-season where Young focused intently on improving his turns at second base, trying to master the switch to the other side of the bag and the different body positioning needed. But even as a (now Gold Glove-winning) second baseman, Young says he still carries a shortstop mentality, trying to think about being rangy and having a strong arm, something he said he wants to focus especially hard on training this off-season just in case he’s needed at shortstop, as he was called upon to do a few times this season.
“I’m so used to the second base throws, so just making sure throughout the season that I’m maintaining my arm strength, and that starts in the off-season…just building the arm strength and being versatile.”
“It’s weird, because coming up in the minor leagues I was a shortstop, and you work on having a ton of range [at that position], so I feel like I’m always training like I am a shortstop, so when I do go to second base I can still have that range and have a strong arm. So deep down, I try to look at myself as a shortstop, just to like, not limit my range or anything like that.”
Positional versatility is something Perry Hill preached constantly, both in general and to Young as an individual. With the coaching staff overturn, the Mariners opted not to bring Hill back with one year left on his contract, so Young will have to make another adjustment this upcoming season after spending years building his relationship with “Bone” – although he’s quick to say this isn’t the end of their friendship.
“I feel like me and Bone in the past couple years have developed such a good relationship, and I know it’s not going to be the end of the relationship,” said Young. “I’ve talked to him a couple times this off-season, and I know we’re definitely going to stay in touch. But it’s just, I learned so much from him, and he’s changed me defensively in such a positive way, and I definitely would not have won this award if it weren’t for him. So we’re definitely going to stay in touch forever. He’s meant so much to me.”
Perhaps sensing that a coaching change was coming, Young allowed himself to want to win the Gold Glove – something over which he had no control, except with the defensive effort he put out on the field every day.
“It’s hard,” he admitted. “You have to come up every single day and have that mentality, and it takes a lot of discipline. So for me, I feel like I worked really hard on defense to make those improvements, and I feel like I was disciplined every single game, and I was on top of that, so it means a lot to win this award. I’m happy all the work I put in this past off-season paid off, and the discipline this whole year – I’m glad it paid off.”
Appropriately, the low-key sophomore second baseman had a low-key celebration at home with his dad in Pittsburgh, where he spends the off-season in the snow and the cold rather than retreating to Florida or Arizona like many of his other baseball peers. Rather than attending a fancy training academy, Young works out with two pitchers: Pittsburgh-born Mason Miller and Mariners farmhand Scott Effross.
His other training partner: dad Rick, who he says is always willing to hit ground balls or feed the fielding machine for him. That’s apparently where the Gold Glove trophy will reside, as well, with Young’s dad:
“He’s already got a spot picked out in his room,” said Young.
Eric Samulski
