Phillies find a treasure in Delmon Young

He finished up in second place for Rookie of The Year in 2007, that in itself tells you something about how he plays baseball. He clubbed 46 doubles in 2010 for the Twins, and Delmon Young seemed like he was on his way to a great baseball career.

The Phillies just picked up Delmon Young yesterday for a bargain $750K, (he also can earn $2.5M in incentives) which is a bargain considering his potential. The Twins traded him to the Detroit Tigers in 2011, and young was part of the World Series team that almost won a ring, just so happened that the San Francisco Giants put an end to that dream by coming out and playing flawlessly to steal that dream from the Tigers.

How did the Phillies get Young for such a bargain? Delmon hit 18 HR and had 74 RBI last year, which is not really a big disappointment. Yes, he struck out 112 times, which he needs to work on this year, but all in all this may be the biggest bargain that the Phillies have picked up this offseason. The truth of the matter may not lie in Young’s potential as a baseball player, but more so an isolated incident that should be taken more like a grain of salt, than the mountain that some people are trying to make out of it.

I just learned about what happened to draw such negative attention to Young. It was an incident in New York City that Delmon was involved with outside the team hotel. He was coming back to the hotel and watched as some tourists donated money to a homeless man just outside the gleaming 4-star hotel where the Tigers were staying. Young yelled an anti-Semetic slur at them as he passed them all by. None of them were Jewish but an altercation ensued and Young was charged with aggravated harassment and plead guilty to it in court. Drinking was a factor in this, and nobody’s perfect why Young went to the comments he did is an event that only he knows. He says he’s cleaned up his act, and that’s good enough for this writer. We tend to want to pigeon hole anyone who does something wrong, and after they have done their service for it, it should be a clean slate and a moot point. Let’s get over it, and move on.

Young will bring experience and a great potential to this team. If he plays like the Delmon Young of 2010, we have a winner. Young could be in the driver’s seat for another contract with the Phillies or some other team. He’s going to be out to have a career year this year, it’s his own livelihood that depends on it.

Here is some of Young’s career stats: