TORONTO – Jacob Young veered slightly in and slightly to his right, calling off his left fielder to catch Daulton Varsho’s fairly routine fly ball to center for the second out of the bottom of the eighth inning Tuesday night, looked up and saw Alejandro Kirk take off from third and came to a quick conclusion.
“There’s no one else on base,” he said. “So you can kind of let it fly.”
And let it fly he did. Standing 297 feet from the plate at the time he made the catch, Young fired a perfect strike to catcher Keibert Ruiz, who hauled it in and tagged the unsuspecting Kirk a split-second before his foot crossed the plate, all the while making sure not to block the runner’s path and risk getting called for obstruction.
Thus did the Nationals pull off a thrilling 8-2 double play to end the eighth with a two-run lead intact, the emotional high point of a 5-4 victory over the Blue Jays that also included a dramatic ninth-inning escape by closer Kyle Finnegan.
The ninth-inning jam made for the most harrowing moment of the night, but Young’s throw one inning prior was the moment everyone in the visitors’ clubhouse at Rogers Centre most wanted to talk about afterward.
“What a play,” Finnegan gushed. “What a play.”
It capped an especially memorable night for Young, the 24-year-old rookie who in his third career start recorded his first career hit, his first career stolen base and his first career outfield assist. He’s the first player in club history to cross off all those milestones in the same game, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
“That’s a huge time to make a play,” he said. “I know defense never goes away, and those are the type of moments, the type of player that I am. I’m going to need to help on the base paths, on defense and then the bat when it comes. I know I’ve got to make those plays when I can, and it feels great to help the team win.”
It’s not the first time Young has thrown out a runner at the plate, but it certainly was the first time he’d done it on a stage anything like this. The Nationals’ seventh-round pick from the 2021 draft, he opened this season at Single-A Wilmington, then made a rapid-fire ascension up the organizational ladder to Double-A Harrisburg and Triple-A Rochester, where he played in only four games before getting promoted again, this time to the majors.
Known for his blazing speed, Young also has built a reputation as a good defensive outfielder, good enough for Nationals manager Davey Martinez to play him in center field and push Lane Thomas and Alex Call (two guys who have played center field in the big leagues) to the corners.
There’s extra responsibility, of course, for a center fielder, who must take charge of the entire outfield and call off his teammates on any ball he believes he can reach. That’s exactly what happened in the bottom of the eighth Tuesday night, when Young had to call off a hard-charging Call from left field and take this critical play for himself.
“We had that conversation the first day he got here,” Martinez said. “You’re the center fielder. You control the outfield. You call it. You take everything. I want you to catch all the balls. And he did it tonight.”
The portly Kirk wasn’t going to make it down the third base line in short order, but even so it required a perfect throw and tag to get him. When he released the ball, Young knew he had put everything he had into the throw. But he had no idea if he had gotten the distance right.
As soon as he saw Ruiz stick his mitt in the air, he knew he had pulled it off. And though it ultimately required a tense break while replay officials watched it to confirm plate umpire Jeremie Rehak’s initial out call, the emotions were no less genuine as the inning ended and Young etched a highlight that will long be remembered by all who experienced it.
“I didn’t think he was going to make that throw, because it was a long fly ball,” Ruiz said. “But he made a really good throw, and I feel really happy for him. He’s been really good for us, running the bases really hard. We love the way he plays.”