Pirates’ Toolmaker
Charlie Young in PNC Park dugout. (Image by Harrison Barden)
Like millions of other kids, Charlie Young, ’20 LAS, dreamed of being a big-league baseball player—and never made it past high school ball. “Fortunately, I was better at computer science.” And by the time he reached Illinois in 2016, there happened to be an analytics revolution going on in the national pastime.
Less than a year out of Naperville North High School, the young Young was thrilled when the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series. Poring over books on sabermetrics—the study of baseball data, named for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR)—he “kept seeing the name of renowned baseball physicist Alan Nathan, a U. of I. professor. He worked in the Loomis Physics Lab, which I could see from my dorm window!”
With Dr. Nathan as a mentor who became a friend, Young worked with the Illini baseball team, setting up a tripod behind the catcher during practices to capture spin rates, launch angles, and other data that MLB teams were using at the time. One favorite moment came when slick-fielding infielder Michael Massey, now with the Kansas City Royals, moved into a shift (three infielders on one side of the field) behind second base. “When the next ball was hit right to him—right into the shift—I thought, ‘This is really fun,’” he says.
Young graduated with a double major in computer science “and astronomy, which helped later. Fluid dynamics, which have to do with the formation of stars and supernova explosions, bear on how a baseball’s seams interact with the air on the way to the plate.”
“There’s something beautiful and peaceful about eating a sandwich in an empty stadium,” says Charlie Young, a senior software engineer with the Pittsburgh Pirates. (Image by Harrison Barden)
“I get to help update scouts’ player-evaluation processes and brainstorm new game-review tools to help the coaches and players on the field.” —Charlie Young, ’20 LAS
After joining the Astros’ analytics department, Young found himself delving into modern baseball’s deep data and taking lunch breaks in Houston’s Minute Maid (now Daikin) Park. “There’s something beautiful and peaceful about eating a sandwich in an empty stadium,” he says.
Last year, the Pittsburgh Pirates got the Astros’ permission to interview Young. “The Pirates flew me in for a talk. I’d never been to Pittsburgh, but I liked it right off the bat,” he recalls. “The city struck me as more Midwestern than East Coast, with a friendliness that reminded me of Champaign.”
As a senior software engineer working in an office at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, Young builds tools that scouts, coaches, and front-office executives use to make on-the-field decisions. “It’s not like [the movie] Moneyball, with old-timers telling the analytics staff to get lost,” he says. “By now, pretty much everybody in the game recognizes the science behind what we see on the field every day.”
Young still likes to walk around the concourse or sit in the bleachers when there’s not a game going on. “I thought I knew all about baseball when I was 18,” he says. “It’s so cool to have a job where I’m constantly learning how much more we’ve still got left to learn. I get to help update scouts’ player-evaluation processes and brainstorm new game-review tools to help the coaches and players on the field. Baseball keeps getting more complex—and more interesting—but we all have the same goal: To help the Pirates win.”
