{"id":669947,"date":"2026-05-14T23:26:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T23:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/669947\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T23:26:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T23:26:25","slug":"nationals-sign-alex-young-to-minor-league-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/669947\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationals Sign Alex Young To Minor League Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Nationals have signed left-hander Alex Young<\/a> to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker<\/a> at MLB.com. The client of THE\u00b7TEAM has been assigned to the Florida Coast League Nationals for now but will presumably report to Triple-A when he\u2019s ready.<\/p>\n

Young will be looking to return to the big leagues for the first time since 2024. Going into 2025, he signed a minor league deal with the Reds. During spring training that year, he suffered an elbow injury and Tommy John surgery seemed possible<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not exactly clear what happened from there. In April of last year, he made a post on his personal Instagram that is no longer available, though he did say he underwent season-ending surgery. Various sources, including Greg Kuffner of YardBarker<\/a>, relayed the details of that post at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought I would be in this situation,\u201d Young wrote. \u201cNor did I think I would ever need surgery. Turns out, I\u2019ve been unknowingly pitching with a distal tear for the past nine years, along with bone fragments being built up over the years. Crazy to think about how much I\u2019ve put my arm through without realizing what was really going on. Definitely not how I wanted to have the 2025 season play out but it\u2019s something I needed to take care of. I\u2019m at peace with it and ready to move on. Surgery went smooth. Thank you to Dr. Meister and his team for giving my elbow a second chance at life. Woke up from anesthesia thinking I was about to throw 100 mph\u2026 turns out I was just asking for snacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to this injury odyssey, Young had some success in the majors. From 2019 to 2024, he logged 277 2\/3 innings, allowing 4.34 earned runs per nine. He was even better in the latter half of that stretch. From 2022 to 2024, he logged 96 innings with a 3.28 ERA. His 20.5% strikeout rate and 9% walk rate in that span weren\u2019t especially strong but he induced grounders on 50.9% of balls in play.<\/p>\n

His current health status is unknown but the Nats are a good landing spot for him. They are rebuilding and have one of the worst bullpens in the league. Their relievers have a collective 4.63 ERA this year, with only five teams higher than that. If Young is able to recover from his surgery and get in good shape, they should be able to find room for him. Everyone in their current bullpen is optionable except for Richard Lovelady<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If Young gets a spot, he himself is out of options. If he finishes the year on the roster, he could be retained via arbitration for 2027, though he has a number of steps to go through before that becomes something worth thinking about.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Katie Stratman, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nationals have signed left-hander Alex Young to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[246887,49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-669947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-alex-young","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}