Casey McGehee, Chris Young win Comeback Players of the Year after beating long odds
Often, when Major League Baseball hands out the Comeback Player of the Year awards, the winners are stars who have returned to form after an injury or rebounded from a poor season.
Last year, for instance, Mariano Rivera won it after an ACL tear. The year before, Buster Posey won it after coming back from his gruesome leg injury.
This year is a little different. This year’s winners, Casey McGehee and Chris Young, truly beat the odds. McGehee’s a 32-year-old third baseman who had an impressive season with the Miami Marlins, and Young’s a 35-year-old who pitched well for the Seattle Mariners. They were named as winners Friday.
This is not to take away from the comeback efforts of Posey or Rivera or Lance Berkman or Jacoby Ellsbury or anybody else who has been named Comeback Player of the Year in the past. McGehee and Young are fascinating for a different reason — they could have never played again in MLB and nobody would have been too surprised.
McGehee had been good for one year but had fallen out of MLB, while Young had showed so much promise eight years ago, but hadn’t been able to stay healthy. Their comebacks being so unlikely makes their awards even sweeter.
McGehee, after that 23-homer, 104-RBI season in 2010, had seen his MLB options dry up to the point where he spent 2013 playing in Japan. He hit .217 in 2012 with the Pirates and Yankees, then played with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in 2013.
McGehee did well there, and got interest from the Marlins, who signed him to a one-year deal. McGehee’s power didn’t return in MLB, he only hit four homers in 2014, but he hit .287/.355/.357 and drove in 76 runs. In Miami, he became both a spark plug for a young team and a clubhouse favorite
On the other side of the award, Young pitched in 30 games for the Mariners in 2014, which is something of a miracle when you consider his injury history. In 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 combined, Young pitched in 28 MLB games. He was in the minor leagues in 2013, where injuries also sidetracked him.
He was released by the Washington Nationals before the 2014 season and grabbed by the Mariners, despite not having had an effective MLB season since 2008. The closest he’d come was 2012, when he had a 4.15 ERA for the Mets in 20 starts. In Seattle, though, Young was solid. He started 29 games, totaling 165 innings with a 12-9 record and a 3.65 ERA.
Next we’ll see the payoff that McGehee and Young get for their comebacks — financially speaking. Young is a free agent and McGehee is arbitration-eligible in Miami.
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Mike Oz is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
