Young was the 2024 Orioles minor league pitcher of the year.
Going into the 2024 season, there was not much reason to know anything about Brandon Young unless you were very, perhaps even unhealthily, invested in the Orioles farm system.. The 6’6” righty was originally an undrafted free agent signing by the team after the shortened five-round 2020 draft. In his second pro season, he suffered an elbow injury that wiped him out for more than a year. Young worked his way back from that surgery to pitch his way into the Jim Palmer Orioles Minor League Pitcher of the Year award for 2024.
Not a single mainstream prospect list had Young listed on it when the 2024 season began. (At FanGraphs, which didn’t post its Orioles list until late June, Young checked in at #10.) This is not surprising. Guys who are 25 years old who have yet to pitch above the Double-A level don’t have much of a prospect case to be made. Young tossed 13.1 innings for Bowie two years ago and 25.1 innings last year. At best, that’s a guy with a question mark. At worst, it’s a guy where it’s not even worth asking the question.
Young only threw another 22 innings for Bowie this year. The difference is that this time, he was fully healthy and the Orioles decided to bump him up to Triple-A Norfolk after Young struck out 36 batters while walking only four. At his age, with a Rule 5 draft decision coming up after the season, it was time for the team to test him and see how he could do against the more advanced competition.
Before thinking about anything that Young did with Norfolk, keep this in mind: This was a horrible season to be a pitcher in the International League, the Triple-A league where Norfolk resides. The league runs/game number was 5.13. Tides pitchers (perhaps with help from their defense) were the worst of the worst, allowing 5.57 runs per game. Dudes were getting their butts kicked on nearly a daily basis. It was not good.
In that context, Young’s 2024 performance for Norfolk looks even better. Across 20 games, he pitched to a 3.44 ERA and 1.281 WHIP, averaging a bit more than a strikeout per inning while maintaining a respectable, if not great, 3.3 BB/9. That was a superior ERA and WHIP to a much-more hyped prospect in Chayce McDermott, who got to make his MLB debut for the Orioles this season, and much better than another guy who entered the season with a bit more prospect notice, Justin Armbruester.
Young was promoted to Norfolk at the end of May. Over his first two-plus months at the level, the Orioles were mostly limiting him to 70-75 pitches, so there are a lot of four inning starts with a couple of bulk relief stints thrown in. It’s tough to make a big splash as a prospect like that, and it’s not like every outing was lights out, but overall, Young was getting it done. Through the 14 games where Young was in this mode, he held batters to a .223/.302/.340 batting line and had a 3.55 ERA.
Starting around the middle of August and lasting through the remainder of the season, the Orioles were letting Young go 80+ pitches as the game situation dictated. Over these final six starts, the batting average number jumped to .273, but Young managed to limit the walks and avoid extra-base hits, so these outings actually lowered his ERA for the season. If you wanted to see him get rewarded with a spot start at the MLB level in September, you were not the only one.
The prospect lists noticed by season’s end. Young is currently the #19 prospect in the system according to both MLB Pipeline and Baseball America, with the ability to boast of better results at a higher level than a couple of the pitching prospects who are ranked ahead of him. From BA’s report on Young:
Young is a sum-of-his-parts pitcher, but that’s not meant in a disparaging manner. His fastball, slider and hard cutter are all more effective because of how well they pair together. He sits 92-94 mph with his average fastball, also relying on an average mid-80s cutter, a fringe-average low-80s slider and a below-average changeup. His bigger, mid-70s average curveball is often his most effective breaking ball, but he doesn’t throw it as often. He is a consistent strike-thrower with plus control.
With a 92-94 mph fastball, that’s not a complete junkballer kind of arsenal. In 2024, the average starting pitcher fastball velocity was generally something that rounds up to 94. Young would slot in below the average but not in joke territory.
That said, you can see why back-of-the-rotation is viewed as Young’s ceiling, because the word “plus” only appears for control. None of his pitches are termed plus or above-average and the slider and changeup are deemed less than that. He is the kind of guy who is likely to experience a rougher than normal transition to the MLB level. Consider what has happened with Cade Povich’s jump to MLB, as Povich had slightly better performance than Young did at Norfolk.
I’ll be rooting for Young, as I rooted for Joe Gunkel and Alexander Wells and others of this ilk before him. Hoping those other guys would make it wasn’t worth much for their future MLB success, so I’ll also be rooting for Plan A for the 2025 season to not have Young as the #5 starter, or even as the first guy up if someone ahead stumbles or is hurt.
Two years ago, the Orioles chose Ryan Watson as the winner for the same award Young was honored this year. Watson, then a 24-year-old, was fresh off of a season split between Bowie and Norfolk with similar results to what Young had this year, except in Watson’s case, he’d spent more time with Bowie and his Norfolk outings were more of a struggle.
Watson was pasted by the Triple-A batters in 2023 and shuffled out of the organization this year. Young is better off than Watson since at least he managed some success in a decent-sized Triple-A sample this year. He’s better off than guys like Gunkel and Wells because he’s at least closer to league-average with his fastball.
Young actually became Rule 5 draft eligible for the first time a year ago, along with other college players who were signed following the 2020 draft. He was barely even worth noting at the time, with no chance of the team protecting him from that draft because there was little if any chance of another team taking him.
That will certainly be different now and we should expect Young to be placed on the 40-man ahead of the deadline date, or maybe even traded for a younger player, as the Orioles did at the trade deadline this year when they sent super-utility guy Billy Cook to the Pirates for pitching prospect Patrick Reilly. He has at least as much chance of making a fringe contribution as some of the guys who rolled through over the course of the 2024 season.
Monday: Creed Willems