President of Baseball Operations
Chris Young is in his fourth full season as the Texas Rangers’ top baseball decision-maker after being promoted to President of Baseball Operations on September 13, 2024. The 46-year-old Young assumed leadership of the club’s entire baseball operations group on August 17, 2022, after originally joining the organization as Executive Vice President & General Manager on December 4, 2020.
Rangers leadership retooled the lineup over the winter with the additions of outfielder Brandon Nimmo and catcher Danny Jansen, while bolstering the rotation with a trade to acquire left-handed pitcher MacKenzie Gore from the Washington Nationals. This followed the 2024–25 offseason in which club leadership re-signed starter Nathan Eovaldi and acquired key returnees for 2026, including reliever Robert Garcia, first baseman Jake Burger, and catcher Kyle Higashioka.
The franchise’s 63-year drought without a World Series championship ended on November 1, 2023, when the Texas Rangers defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks in the fifth and deciding game of the Fall Classic. That concluded a historic postseason run that saw Texas go 13–4 in the A.L. Wild Card, Division and League Championship Series, and the World Series, including an 11–0 record on the road.
Ahead of the 2023 campaign, Young fortified Texas’ starting pitching with the free agent signings of Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, and Andrew Heaney. His midseason additions via trade for pitchers Aroldis Chapman, Jordan Montgomery, Max Scherzer, and Chris Stratton also played a key role in Texas’ improvement from 68 to 90 regular season victories in 2023. The pitching acquisitions followed the signings of free agent All-Star infielders Corey Seager and Marcus Semien, who placed second and third, respectively, in the 2023 A.L. MVP voting the previous winter.
During the championship run, the Rangers also received significant contributions from several homegrown players, including third baseman Josh Jung and outfielder Evan Carter. In recognition of the team’s overall on-field accomplishments, Baseball America selected the Rangers as its 2023 Organization of the Year, Texas’ first such honor since 1989.
The Rangers’ emphasis on player development was further displayed in 2024, when first-round draft selections Cole Winn (2018), Justin Foscue (2020), Jack Leiter (2021), Kumar Rocker (2022), and Wyatt Langford (2023) all made their Major League debuts.
A veteran of 13 Major League seasons as a right-handed pitcher with five clubs, Young joins Eddie Robinson (1976–82) and Tom Grieve (1984–94) as just the third former MLB player to lead the Rangers’ baseball operations department and is one of five current baseball operations heads who played in the Major Leagues. He was the first former Major League player to win the World Series in a head baseball operations role since Kenny Williams of the Chicago White Sox in 2005. He is also the first individual to earn a World Series crown as both a player (Kansas City in 2015) and a General Manager/Baseball Operations Chief since former New York Yankees pitcher Johnny Murphy, who was the General Manager of the World Champion New York Mets in 1969.
Prior to joining the Rangers, Young spent three years working for Major League Baseball and Hall of Famer Joe Torre, earning a promotion to Senior Vice President, Baseball Operations in February 2020. In that role, he oversaw the On-Field Operations and Umpiring Departments and served as the league’s principal liaison to Major League managers regarding play on the field. He worked on the application of playing rules and regulations, on-field standards and discipline, pace of play, and other special projects. He originally joined Major League Baseball as Vice President in May 2018.
Young posted a 79–67 record with a 3.95 ERA in 271 games/221 starts with Texas (2004–05), San Diego (2006–10), the New York Mets (2011–12), Seattle (2014), and Kansas City (2015–17). Originally selected by Pittsburgh in the third round of the 2000 MLB Draft, he was traded to Montreal in December 2002 and then to Texas in April 2004. The right-hander made seven starts in his first Major League action in 2004 and was selected as the Rangers Rookie of the Year in 2005, leading the staff in starts (31) and strikeouts (137), and ranking second in wins (12) and innings (164.2).
Traded to San Diego in January 2006, he posted the National League’s lowest opponents’ batting average in both 2006 and 2007 and was a member of the 2007 N.L. All-Star Team. Hampered by injuries for much of the next six seasons, Young matched his career high with 12 wins in 2014 for Seattle and was named the A.L. Comeback Player of the Year by MLB and The Sporting News.
Young spent his final three big league seasons with Kansas City, winning 11 games for the 2015 World Champion Royals. He pitched 15.2 innings throughout Kansas City’s postseason run, working 3.0 innings of hitless relief en route to the win in a 14-inning victory over the New York Mets in Game 1 of the World Series. In 2018, he went to spring training with San Diego but was released at the end of March and retired as an active player.
Young starred in both baseball and basketball over two seasons each at Princeton University, earning Ivy League Rookie of the Year honors as a 6’10” center in basketball and as a pitcher in baseball in 1999, the first male athlete in Ivy League history to win those honors in two sports. He went 9–1 with a 1.64 ERA in his two years for the Tigers baseball team and finished with 801 points, 350 rebounds, and 142 blocked shots while starting all 60 basketball games from 1998–2000, earning all-Ivy League honors in both sports. He graduated from Princeton in 2002 with a BA in politics after beginning his professional baseball career. Young wrote his senior thesis on the impact of the life of Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson on racial stereotypes. He is a native of Dallas and a 1998 graduate of Highland Park High School, where he earned All-State honors in both basketball and baseball in his senior year. Young was inducted into the HPHS Athletic Hall of Fame in April 2023 and had his baseball number retired by the school in January 2024.
Chris resides in Dallas with his wife, Liz, daughter Catherine, and sons Scott and Grant. Liz’s father, Dick Patrick, has been an executive with the Washington Capitals since 1982 and currently serves as Team Chairman and Vice Chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, while her brother, Chris Patrick, is the Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Washington Capitals. Her great-grandfather, NHL Hall of Famer Lester Patrick, was a longtime coach and General Manager of the New York Rangers.