Michael Young and Benjamin Franklin

In May, Michael Young was the #9 consensus ranked third baseman. In June, he hit .257/.306/.327 with zero home runs and zero stolen bases, which was really only slightly worse than the .280/.306/.372 he demonstrated up until that point. He was still scoring runs, but you could put Carlos Maldonado on second base for the Texas Rangers offense and he’d still score 120 runs in a season.

For the second half consensus rankings, Young’s stinker of a June only dropped him down to a consensus #15 ranking. At 15, he’s still ahead of an ailing Evan Longoria, Chase Headley, David Freese, Kevin Youkilis, Trevor Plouffe, Will Middlebrooks, and a goodly number of other bodies occupying the hot corner who you could probably make a better case for.

The Michael Young situation was succinctly wrapped up by commenter “kid” in saying “I couldn’t give away Michael Young if I tied a $100 bill to his back.”

First of all, I think that would be an interesting fantasy-based social experiment — that is, to actually tie $100 to Michael Young and see if you could get someone to take him. Second, it illustrates just how far his stock has fallen, even if it hasn’t necessarily fallen that much in the consensus rankings.

Currently, Michael Young is hitting If we want to focus on strict 5×5 categories, Michael Young ranks as such among third basemen:

HR	R	RBI	SB	BA
37*	14	16	25	20

*tied with 11 others in HR

This is just if you sort all third basemen, where he sits in the overall rank order — I’m not categorizing every third baseman with three home runs as being “15th ranked” just because they all have three home runs. The fact is, Michael Young is down with the bottom feeders in power with guys like Luis Valbuena and Jonathan Hererra. Brandon Inge has more than twice the number of home runs.

But you could absorb the dearth of home runs as long as you were getting the typical production out of Young that most expected. What you’re getting is the worst offensive production since his rookie season.

Young’s BABIP is low for his career average, but at .300 it’s about where his hit trajectory expects it to be. He’s hitting more ground balls, and getting a bit unlucky with his home run per fly ball rate. But across the board, he’s having just a miserable time hitting fastballs this season, where he’s historically feasted. In fact, he’s having a pretty miserable time hitting anything but the curveball and he’s only seeing the yakker about 9% of the time.

You drafted Michael Young thinking it was about the safest .300/.350/.450 with 90 runs, 90 RBI, and double digit home runs in town. What you’ve got to date is worse than what you could have plucked off the waiver wire, which is where Young deserves to be at this stage. If you own him, try to emphasize the .289 batting average he’s had over his last 19 games and see if you can find someone to take him off your hands (and hope they don’t notice the .368 SLG in that span).

Michael Young, the consensus #15 third baseman for the second half. In 2007.