PHOENIX — Chris Young stood in front of a handful of Texas Rangers officials one evening inside a San Diego hotel suite at the end of July, debating how to handle the upcoming MLB trade deadline. Behind him rested an easel and a pad of paper. On one side of the page, Young wrote the team’s record through its first 60 games: 40-20. On the other side, he wrote the record for the next 45: 20-25.
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Three months before the Rangers hoisted the World Series trophy for the first time in franchise history, after a 5-0 Game 5 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday at Chase Field, Young asked his lieutenants to forecast the future. The team had stormed to a 6 1/2-game lead in the American League in late June but lost its footing as injuries ransacked the roster. Which record, Young wanted to know, represented the Texas Rangers?
“He went around the room and asked what we thought,” said Dayton Moore, the former Kansas City Royals general manager and one of Young’s senior advisers. “Can we win, or can we not win? Do you believe in this team, or do you not believe in this team?”
A healthy debate followed. The men went around the room, toting the reasons for optimism versus the causes for concern. The previous few weeks had not treated the club well. Corey Seager, the franchise’s $325 million shortstop, was nursing a thumb injury. The team had already lost Jacob deGrom, a $185 million offseason addition, to Tommy John surgery. The executives worried about the status of Nathan Eovaldi’s elbow. And the group harbored a healthy respect for the surging Houston Astros.
Yet Young and his cohorts recognized the opportunity before them. Texas’ ownership group had invested hundreds of millions in acquiring top-level, free-agent talent. The team still occupied first place. And the lineup could be ferocious. “Everybody agreed,” Moore said, “that this team has a chance to win.”
When the room reached a consensus, Young approached the easel. At 6-foot-10, he towers over almost every person he meets. Friends describe him as a man capable of startling kindnesses but driven by vibrant intensity. His temper can appear volcanic. Young flipped the page that contained the two records. On the next page was a collection of prospects the Rangers considered expendable. Young pointed to the farmhands.
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Then, Young said, we have to be prepared to trade every one of these guys.
Bits of blue, silver and gold confetti rained down on Young as he cradled the Commissioner’s Trophy on Wednesday night. He stood on a riser with the roster he constructed, the manager he lured out of retirement and the prize that had eluded his franchise since its inception. Young had a message for all the fans who, like him, had followed the Rangers since childhood. “The wait is over,” he said. “They deserve this.”
The players clambered down into the outfield. Max Scherzer clutched his daughter in his arms. “We’re the best in the world!” he told her. “We’re the best in the world! We’re the best in the world!” Jordan Montgomery reached down, scooped a handful of confetti and pocketed the souvenir. Neither pitcher had been a member of the Rangers when Young stood before the easel in San Diego. Their presence signified the urgency of Young’s stewardship, a relentless push for the acquisition of talent that resulted in a championship.
The Texas Rangers reached this summit slowly, and then all at once. They had come close before. The team collected back-to-back American League pennants in 2010 and 2011. The club won the American League West in 2015 and 2016. A fallow period followed. When Rangers owner Ray Davis hired Young to serve under president of baseball operations Jon Daniels in December 2020, the team had finished in last place in two of its previous three seasons.
Young came to the Rangers from Major League Baseball’s central office, where he worked after his 13-year playing career ended in 2018. He oversaw player discipline. He dealt with umpires. He was living in Connecticut, cramming his massive frame onto the Metro-North train to commute to MLB’s Manhattan office. He found the work invigorating but felt disconnected from competition. Mets owner Steve Cohen pursued Young to run his baseball operations department. Young opted for a job closer to home.
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Young grew up in Highland Park, a posh district in Dallas. He attended Highland Park High School several years ahead of Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw and Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford. The opportunity with the Rangers afforded Young the chance to return to his hometown team, for which he had played in 2004 and 2005, while learning from Daniels.
In his victory speech after Game 5, Young made sure to thank Davis and Daniels. Davis financed the franchise’s shock-and-awe spending in recent years, a campaign that began with the mega-contract for Seager paired with a $175 million deal for infielder Marcus Semien after the 2021 season. Daniels fortified the infrastructure of the organization during his 17 years in charge. He traded for both of the team’s catchers, Jonah Heim and Mitch Garver. He acquired first baseman Nathaniel Lowe. His draft department selected third baseman Josh Jung with the eighth pick in the 2019 draft.
The arrival of Seager and Semien in 2022 did not stop the team’s losing. Davis fired Daniels and manager Chris Woodward midway through that season. In the winter, Young flew to Nashville to lure Bruce Bochy out of retirement. Bochy listened as Young extolled the virtues of the current lineup. All the club needed, Young insisted, was starting pitching. “I said, ‘Once they get that, this team will win,’” Bochy recalled earlier this postseason.
With Bochy on board, Young opted to be aggressive in the free-agent market. A massive contract landed deGrom. More efficient spending came on Eovaldi (two years, $34 million) and Andrew Heaney (one year, $12.5 million). The club displayed its potential during the early days of the season. But after deGrom and Eovaldi went down, Young opted not to concede the season. And so they dealt a handful of well-regarded prospects, including infielder Luisangel Acuña, to land Scherzer and Montgomery.
A series of ailments compromised Scherzer this October. The Rangers won four of the six postseason games started by Montgomery. To Young, the tangible value of the acquisitions was paired with the intangible boost their arrival offered the rest of the team.
“They deserved that,” Young said. “They played their way into that position, and they deserved that. Most importantly, I believed in the character of the group. Winning people. High-character guys. I knew that they would fight until the end.”
In the hours after Game 5 of the American League Championship Series, when Houston staged a remarkable comeback to wrest control away from Texas, Bochy bumped into Young’s children at Globe Life Field. The kids were so distraught at the outcome, after Jose Altuve launched a go-ahead homer following a lengthy delay related to an on-field brouhaha, that the manager felt compelled to apologize to his boss.
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“Seeing them broke my heart,” Bochy said, as Young recalled. “I’m so sorry.”
“We’re going to go win two in Houston,” Young insisted. “This is going to be the catalyst.”
As a player, Young leaned upon a pair of axioms: It’s a performance-based game. And the game owes you nothing. The only solution, he figured, was for the Rangers to play better. He opted to project calm. “He’s everybody’s dad,” Davis said. “He’s cool, calm, and he’s been there.” Young thumbed out a message of encouragement to his staff on the team-wide Slack channel. He even reached out to Arizona general manager Mike Hazen and assistant general manager Amiel Sawdaye to congratulate them on defeating Philadelphia in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series.
“Hell yeah, get another tomorrow,” Young wrote.
“Thanks, CY,” Hazen wrote back. “Hoping we can both meet up next week.”
Hazen, a fellow Princeton alum, pronounced himself stunned by Young’s grace after the defeat. Most of the executive class roils with anxiety during games and overcooks with fury after defeats. “Do you know anyone who would do this?” Hazen recalled asking his lieutenants. “I wouldn’t.”
Young descended from the riser at Chase Field and ambled toward the visitors clubhouse. His path was blocked by players he wanted to thank, colleagues he wanted to embrace, reporters wanting his time. Eventually he made his way through the throng. He doffed his commemorative cap to the Rangers fans and ventured into the champagne-popping maelstrom.
The players were crooning “Higher,” the Creed song that became this team’s unlikely anthem, at the top of their lungs as they helicoptered alcohol across the room. The group pulled Young into the crossfire and chanted his initials. At some point, he lost his shoes. He sloshed in his socks through puddles of Budweiser and Korbel Brut.
All around him were the players he considered worth believing in. There was Seager, the taciturn slugger, whose three home runs propelled him to his second World Series MVP trophy in four years. There was Semien, the meticulous infielder who overcame an October slump to deliver crushing home runs in the final two games of this series. There was Eovaldi, whose elbow healed in time for him to burnish his October resume with six gutty innings in Game 5. There was Adolis García, the budding star who strained an oblique muscle in Game 3, and there was Travis Jankowski, the journeyman who provided crucial hits in García’s absence as Texas closed the show.
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It did not matter that Montgomery stumbled in Game 2 against Arizona. It did not matter that Scherzer broke down. It does not matter what becomes of the talented prospects Young dealt away. “I love those guys,” Young said. “But that’s the price of acquiring winning players.”
He had been willing to flip to the next page of the easel, to sacrifice pieces of the future for a chance at glory in the present. Young opted to wager on his group. In the end, they turned out to be far more than a team capable of going 40-20. They were capable of winning it all. And they did.
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(Top photo of Chris Young holding the Commissioner’s Trophy and talking with Rangers president of business operations and chief operating officer Neil Leibman: Rob Tringali / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
