Could Young win a Gold Glove? The stats back him up

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Last season, Jacob Young rose from High-A to the Major Leagues. This season, he is contending for a Gold Glove in center field.

It didn’t take long into his big league career for Young to establish himself as a head-turning defender. Young, 25, is atop several statistical categories as he nears the end of his first full season in the pros.

“To me, he’s a Gold Glover and he deserves it,” said Nationals manager Dave Martinez.

Entering Wednesday, Young led all players with 20 outs above average (OAA) – by definition, “a range-based metric of skill that shows how many outs a player has saved.” Among center fielders, Jose Siri of the Rays is second with 16 OAA.

Young also is the league leader in outs above average to a player’s left (10) and first among center fielders to a player’s right (six).

“We kind of knew what Jacob was defensively,” Martinez said. “We didn’t want to mess with him a whole lot because he could really go get the ball. I know we talked a little bit about positioning with him because he did play really, really shallow in the Minor Leagues, so we pushed him back a little bit. But other than that, we told him, make it his own, and he did that and he’s been unbelievable.”

Young is tied with Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong with seven 5-star catches, plays that have a 0 to 25 percent catch probability. In 4-star catches (26 to 50 percent probability), Young is first among all players.

Young is also the league leader with 3.9 feet vs. average and 38.7 feet covered on jumps, “the Statcast metric that shows which players have the fastest reactions and most direct routes in the outfield,” per MLB.com. His 4.7 reaction – feet covered in the first 1.5 seconds in any direction – also ranks first.

“He’s very aggressive in the outfield, as we know,” Martinez said. “He’s great coming in on balls, he’s really good going back on balls and laterally on balls. We worked really hard on his throwing where he gets in his legs a little bit better. He’s made some pretty decent throws.”

Young has become the anchor in a developing Nationals outfield that includes fellow rookies James Wood in left and Dylan Crews (MLB’s No. 1 overall prospect) in right. While each member of the trio has center-field experience, Martinez – who played the majority of his Major League innings at the position – has reiterated to Young how he views his role.

“The emphasis of him changing stuff when it comes to playing the outfield is, zero,” Martinez said. “I always tell him all the time, ‘Be aggressive, that’s all I want you to do. You can catch everything.’”