Here are 10 things to know about Texas Rangers great Michael Young, including his all-time franchise records and his current role with the team’s front office.
1. Basics
Name: Michael Brian Young
Born: October 19, 1976
Hometown: Covina, Calif.
Position: SS, 3B, 2B
2. Franchise GOAT
Michael Young is unquestionably on the Mount Rushmore of all-time Rangers greats. He’d slot in nicely next to Adrian Beltre, Ivan Rodriguez and Nolan Ryan.
Young is the Texas Rangers franchise leader in hits, games played, runs scored, singles, doubles, triples, total bases and at-bats.
He’s also the franchise leader in strikeouts and double plays grounded into. Hey, it comes with the territory when you play more games in a Rangers uniform than anyone else, ever.
3. Current role
Young is currently serving as a special assistant to the general manager for the Rangers. He’s held that title since 2014.
During All-Star Weekend 2024 in Arlington, Young and Beltre served as the AL and NL managers for the MLB Futures Game.
4. Underrated move
In 2000, the Rangers acquired Young as a 23-year-old second-base prospect from the Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for Esteban Loaiza. He’d go on to spend the next 12 seasons in Texas.
Young had a cup of coffee with the big league club in 2000, playing two games to close out the season. He started the next season at Triple-A but was back with the Rangers by May. He’d never go back to the minors.
5. Team player
Young immediately developed a reputation for his hard-nosed, play-the-game-the-right-way style, which resonated with Rangers fans immediately after the acrimonious departure of Alex Rodriguez. It helped that Young showed he was willing to change positions to help the team, as he switched from second base to shortstop when the team acquired Alfonso Soriano.
Young would later swap from shortstop to third once Elvis Andrus came around, then from third to DH/utility when the Rangers signed Beltre.
6. ‘That’s how you back up your teammate’
Young was a natural fit for a leader in the clubhouse and stepped into the role perfectly: speaking first in team meetings, quietly seeking out teammates when an issue needed to be addressed, and never asking out of games.
A quintessential “Michael Young, team leader” moment came in a 2012 game against the Royals. Nelson Cruz, who had homered earlier in the game, took a fastball to the backside from Royals pitcher Louis Coleman in the ninth inning. Cruz took exception and the benches cleared.
After the dust cleared, Young stepped into the batter’s box as the next hitter, and on the first pitch scorched a two-run homer that scored both him and Cruz. If there’s a way to make a team pay for hitting one of your guys, that’s it.
Young was positively charged rounding the bases, his home run trot practically a sprint until he met Cruz at the plate and greeted him with a big smack to the helmet as if to say, “I gotcha.”
7. A loyalist in Ron Washington
Young was one of the defining faces of Rangers baseball when they started to come out of the doldrums of the club’s mid-2000s struggles. Another one of those faces was manager Ron Washington.
And Ron Washington loved him some Michael Young. The old-school manager called Young the ultimate “character guy.”
“When I was a novice manager and I had to go to somebody, I went to Michael Young,” Washington once said. “He said: ‘I got your back, skip.’ And from that moment forward, we got better. He made people better. He made me better.”
In fact, Washington’s loyalty would become something of an issue towards the end of Young’s tenure with the Rangers.
8. 2012 struggles lead to bittersweet ending
Simply put: Young was one of the worst players in baseball during the 2012 season. But despite Young posting an OPS of just .682 and also being a defensive liability, Washington outright refused to take the 35-year-old out of the everyday lineup for the large majority of the season.
Washington said in August of 2012: “I know his season isn’t up to par on what he’s capable of doing, but I’m not getting off the ship.”
This all came after a 2011 offseason in which Young and then-GM Jon Daniels got crossways due to Young’s changing role on the team.
So in the offseason of 2012, the Rangers finally cut Young loose and shipped him to Philadelphia in exchange for a pair of minor-league pitchers. Opening Day 2013 was the first time in 12 seasons the Rangers’ roster was without the revered veteran.
“If there was crying in baseball,” Washington said after the trade, “I’d be crying.”
9. Post-career clarity with JD
It wasn’t long after Young’s retirement after the 2013 season that he and Daniels made up. It wasn’t long after retirement that he was hired as a special assistant to Daniels, either.
“I’m happy with the fact that Jon and I have a good relationship,” Young said in 2014. “We’ve talked on a few occasions recently. I think of the things that happened in the past, the two most disappointed people were Jon and I because we had such a close relationship. But I think having gone through it, we’ve both come out better for it.”
10. Rangers royalty
After all was said and done, Young took his rightful place in the Rangers history books.
Young was inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame in 2016, but in 2019 he was put in even rarer company when the team retired his No. 10 jersey. There have been more than 20 members inducted into the Rangers’ Hall of Fame, but the team has retired just six jersey numbers, and of those six only four actually played within the lines for the club.
“The last game I played may not have been in a Rangers uniform,” Young said after his retirement. “But I’ll always be a Ranger.”
Twitter: @coylio33
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