It didn’t take long for Jared Young to make a bunch of new friends in South Korea.
Wednesday, in his second game playing professional baseball in the Korean Baseball Organization with the Doosan Bears, the 29-year-old from Prince George had himself a game for the ages.
He hit two home runs, drove in eight runs and went 5-for-6 at the plate to lead the Bears to a crushing 30-6 annihilation of the first-place Kia Tigers.
The 30 runs by the Bears set a single-game KBO record.
Young, who joined the Bears this week after securing his release from the triple-A Memphis Redbirds, silenced a Tigers crowd at Kia Champions Field in Gwangju in the third inning when he launched his first home run with a two-run shot to centre field that put the Bears ahead 3-2.
Then, in the sixth inning, after two consecutive walks, Young clubbed another ball far beyond the centerfield wall to increase the lead to 16-3.
In his second plate appearance of the inning with the bases loaded and two out, Young went low with his bat to slice a ball into deep left field to score three more runs.
But he wasn’t done. The former Prince George Knight also hit an RBI single in the seventh and rapped out another base hit in the eighth.
Playing at left field and first base, his eight RBIs in the game tied the record for foreign players in the 10-team league.
On Tuesday in Gwangju, the Seoul-based Bears beat the Tigers 12-7. Young came close to hitting his first home run in that game when he bounced one off the top of the wall which landed for a double as he went 1-for-3.
He’s now batting .667 with six hits for 14 total bases and two walks in 11 plate appearances.
Drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 15th round in 2017, Young made his major league debut Sept. 16, 2022. He went on to play 22 games over two seasons with Chicago, batting .210 with two home runs.
Young was picked up on waivers during the off-season by the St. Louis Cardinals. In 74 games with Memphis, he batted .285/.411/.506 and had 11 home runs, 35 RBI, and six stolen bases.
He signed a $300,000 contract with Doosan on July 23.
The Bears (53-50-2) currently rank fifth in the standings, with 39 games left in their 144-game schedule.
