HOUSTON — The start to Brandon Young’s career has been a seesaw.
In mid-July, the rookie right-hander delivered the worst start of his young career, allowing nine hits and seven runs in 4 1/3 innings against the Marlins. Two weeks later, he twirled his best outing, pitching six innings of two-run ball against the Blue Jays. Then two weeks after that, the opposite happened once again as Young gave up six runs in three innings versus the Athletics.
That start against the Athletics was the 10th of Young’s career, and he was dejected afterward.
“It’s just disappointing letting the team down. Almost every time I go out,” Young said. “It’s just really frustrating. Pretty disappointed. I’ve just got to be better. That’s on me.”
The seesaw flipped on Young once again Friday during his masterful performance against the Astros. Young carried a perfect game bid into the eighth inning, only to lose it on an infield single by Ramón Urías that Young threw away.
It wasn’t just the best outing of Young’s life or by an Orioles starter this season. It was one of the best performances by a pitcher in the history of a franchise that has never thrown a perfect game.
“That’s one of those moments right there for a young pitcher to where it kind of catapults him forward through the rest of their career,” Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino said.
The best way to understand Young’s inconsistency thus far — and his overall 5.68 ERA — is that he’s just like every other young Orioles starting pitcher in recent memory. Dean Kremer, Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez all began their careers in similar fashion to Young. Rodriguez posted a 7.35 ERA through his first 10 starts in 2023 and was demoted to Triple-A. Kremer had a 7.55 ERA in 13 starts for the rebuild-era Orioles in 2021. Bradish recorded a 7.38 ERA in his first 10 career starts in 2022.
There’s no guarantee that Young’s path will result in the future success (injuries aside) that Kremer, Bradish and Rodriguez experienced. But if they overcame the poor starts to their careers, why can’t Young?
“I’ve got a ton of confidence in Drew French and our pitching staff and our players, obviously,” Mansolino said. “They’re getting better every time they go out. … That’s the expectation that they get better. We don’t want them to stay the same. They’re supposed to get better year by year here.”
Young said after his Athletics start that he wanted to “try to forget it as quick as possible.” He did just that, mixing his five-pitch arsenal to vex the Astros’ lineup and strike out six batters.
“Honestly, it’s easier said than done trying to flush bad outings like that,” Young said. “But just looking forward to the next and trying to prepare myself.”
Orioles’ Brandon Young loses perfect game bid with 4 outs left in 7-0 win over Astros
Mansolino heard Young’s postgame comments last weekend, and the skipper was impressed with how “accountable” the rookie pitcher was. More than his velocity (good enough at mid-90s mph) or his stuff (a solid splitter and slider), Mansolino believes that Young’s maturity is why he’ll succeed in the show.
“That’s one of the reasons why this guy is going to get the best out of himself in his career,” Mansolino said. “It’s one of the reasons why he’s going to maximize his ability, because he’s a young, accountable player. Not all players are that way. He is. So, to see him kind of take the ownership of how he’s pitched so far, the inconsistency, and to see him go out on the mound in this environment, against that team … and pitch the way he did, it kind of makes sense. Because people who aren’t accountable, they aren’t able to do those things.”
Young, 26, doesn’t have the ability to spin the baseball that Bradish does, and he doesn’t have a 100 mph arm or top 100 prospect pedigree like Rodriguez. But Young’s path forward could be similar to Kremer, who has developed into a reliable innings-eater for the Orioles.
Over the past two years, Kremer has discussed how he’s matured as a pitcher, from his early days of sometimes letting the circumstances get under his skin. The ability to block out noise is something Young, despite his inexperience in the big leagues, already has.
“I think his mound presence is just super mature,” catcher Adley Rutschman said. “You can tell when he goes out on the mound, he’s the same guy whether it’s going good or going bad. Just even-keel, sticks to his process and goes out there and does it. I think if you looked at him today versus his last start, it looks pretty similar, his mound presence does.”
Of course, it’s not just a pitcher’s mentality that matters. His stuff, fastball velocity and, most important, command do, too. Mansolino has frequently discussed how much pitching strategy has changed just in his six years on a big league coaching staff.
A few years ago, some MLB teams, including the Orioles, prioritized stuff so much that they told their catchers to set up down the middle, ignoring commanding the strike zone and just letting their pitch movement do the work. Now, as hitters have adjusted to increased sweeper usage and fastballs at the top of the zone, Mansolino believes the philosophy of letting a pitcher just be a stuff monster is only feasible for the nastiest arms in baseball.
Young, on the other hand, must learn how to command his pitches, particularly his fastball — like he did Friday.
“I’ve watched pitchers come to the big leagues. The ones that perform right away, those are the ones who are able to command their fastball at least to both sides and hopefully to the four quadrants,” Mansolino said. “The whole ‘set up middle and throw as hard as you can’ is reserved for the guys that throw 100 [mph] and that’s about it. If you don’t do that, you’ve got to command your fastball.”
Young’s near-perfect game came against the team he grew up rooting for, in the stadium he attended as a kid and with his family and friends from his hometown of nearby Lumberton, Texas, in attendance. The right-hander had to sign as an undrafted free agent in 2020 because the draft was shortened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Young has never been seen as a top prospect and parts of his minor league career were stunted by a second Tommy John elbow reconstruction, he still came up through the Orioles’ system with many of the club’s young core. Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg both expressed confidence that the pitcher Young was Friday is closer to who he is than the one they saw against the Athletics last weekend.
“I’ve known BY my whole professional career. He’s a competitor, first and foremost,” Westburg said. “That guy, the circumstances he was signed under, I think he has a chip on his shoulder. I think that he really wants to be here. I’ll say it again: He’s a competitor. In this league, you’re going to get punched in the face. If you aren’t one of those adjectives that I described him as, it’d be easy to crumble and be sent down.
“Right now, we’re letting him run, and I think tonight showed kind of that true potential and just who he is and what his personality is and the real Brandon Young that I had a pleasure of playing behind for some years now.”
Have a news tip? Contact Jacob Calvin Meyer at jameyer@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/JCalvinMeyer.
from Baltimore Sun https://ift.tt/rC4QsbK
via IFTTT
