Where there's smoke, there's Young

Chesny Young might have clobbered the most titanic home run of his career Tuesday and he didn't even see where it landed.

The Cubs' No. 29 prospect smacked four hits, including his fourth long ball, and scored three runs as Double-A Tennessee beat Birmingham, 9-1, at Regions Field.

Young beat out a single to short in his first at-bat to start the game, then scored on Victor Caratini's single. After walking in the second and striking out in the fourth, the 23-year-old third baseman collected another infield single in the sixth. He followed that up with an RBI ground-rule double into left-center field in the seventh before his home run in the ninth careened off the left-field scoreboard.

"I rolled over the first at-bat -- a ground ball between short and third -- and then a weak chopper up the middle," Young said. "I know how baseball works usually. You get two cheap hits and then the next ones are hit hard right at someone, so I knew I needed to hit it even harder.

"It was cool. It was [righty Matt Cooper] pitching, a 2-1 count and I was sitting fastball. He left me a changeup up. I think the cool thing to do nowadays is not to look at it. I was looking at the bag. I got into the dugout and someone told me it was off the scoreboard. I think that's the professional scoreboard shot."

It marked Young's second four-hit game over his last seven contests. The Georgia native has hits in nine of his last 10 Southern League games.

"Me and our hitting coaches have been working all year," he said. "I had good batting averages my first two seasons. I always thought I had more in the tank, so I wanted to pull it out with tweaks, mechanics-wise and approach-wise. It's definitely shown the past week and it's given me confidence."

After batting .238 in May and June, Young has turned things around and sports a .315 average (34-for-108) since the end of June. For a player with a career .309/.384/.381 slash line, a prolonged slump can make a player question what they are doing at the plate.

"The one thing I noticed was that my load was getting a little stagnant," the 2014 14th-rounder said. "So I would load really early and stay in it for a long time before I'd swing. That's the one thing we kinda saw and wanted to change and work on. Just been trying to smooth out and get better timing with my load.

"That kind of downspin was frustrating at times. I knew, at some point, it would turn around being the player I am and the player I have been."

Bijan Rademacher homered and drove in three runs while Caratini, the Cubs' No. 16 prospect, scored twice for the Smokies.

Michael Wagner (2-0) allowed one run on five hits and two walks while fanning three over seven innings to earn the win.

No. 3 White Sox prospect Spencer Adams took the loss. He was tagged for five runs on six hits and three walk over three innings.