Maverick Handley was behind the plate that day in 2022, when Brandon Young walked off the mound knowing something was wrong with his elbow. Before the discomfort started, Handley, then a catcher with Double-A Bowie, was impressed by the performance of this 6-foot-6 right-hander who was rapidly gaining a following in the Orioles organization as a pitcher to watch.

Handley wouldn’t see Young again up close for almost two years. Young underwent his second Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery, but by the time he returned to the mound and made his Triple-A Norfolk debut on May 29, 2024, it was Handley behind the plate once again.

The bookend catching duties for Handley helped form a bond with Young as battery mates.

“I’ve been at a low point for him. Been at a high point for him,” Handley said during spring training. “We’ve reflected on that together, and I think that kind of deepens our relationship together. We’ve been through the trenches.”

Handley will be watching the next major moment of Young’s career from afar. The catcher is still with Norfolk; Young is about to live out a childhood dream.

The Orioles are promoting Young to start Saturday’s game against the Cincinnati Reds in his major league debut. The opening in the rotation came because of injuries elsewhere, and Young can relate to the frustration those pitchers must feel as they work through their recoveries.

He has waited for this, after all — a 26-year-old who has faced more than his share of hurdles on the path to the major leagues.

Young went undrafted in the pandemic-shortened five-round MLB draft in 2020. He never shot to the top of prospect rankings and was seemingly on the outside looking in at a rotation spot since 2024.

And yet, when the Orioles were dealing with injuries last season, general manager Mike Elias uttered Young’s name as a potential option. He didn’t know it until his teammate Chayce McDermott showed him the quote.

Seeing that, Young said, “it kind of made it more of a realization” that he was close.

He’s more than close now. He’s here.

Time to nitpick

Over the winter, at a gym in the small city of Beaumont, Texas, Young trained with three other professional baseball players. The owner of the facility gave them a key. Come in anytime, the owner said, so they did, four Texas boys gradually turning into major leaguers.

The others were Chase Shugart, a reliever with the Pittsburgh Pirates; Jack Dallas, a Double-A pitcher with the Philadelphia Phillies; and Grant Rogers, a young starter in the Toronto Blue Jays’ system.

Ahead of the 2024 season, Young was still finding his way back into form. He had returned from elbow surgery to pitch 40 innings of rehab outings in 2023, and while he was healthy going into that winter, there was a smaller sample from which to study.

With his group of friends in a Beaumont training facility, Young had much more data at his disposal. He threw 111 innings in 2024 between Double-A and Triple-A and did many things well; he produced a 3.57 ERA across the levels and struck out 10.7 batters per nine innings.

Any injuries were well and truly behind him. So Young had the time to nitpick.

“When you have a fully healthy offseason, that gives you time to really map it out and do everything you want to accomplish, step by step,” assistant pitching coach Mitch Plassmeyer said. “I know, physically, there were some things he wanted to work on with the strength staff. When you’re going to go pitch 150-plus innings for the first time in a while, you kind of figure out where your deficiencies are, where you clean up.”

Amid his largest workload since joining professional baseball, Young noticed his legs lose strength and his velocity tick down over the course of the year. He focused on improving his base, as Plassmeyer called it, to allow him to handle an even larger workload this year.

Plus, Young made minor adjustments to his delivery to make it more repeatable on the mound.

“Some small delivery stuff that for him just helps him carry velocity, carry his command,” Plassmeyer said. “Carrying command is obviously so big for him, so anything he can do to make himself a little more repeatable, I think that goes along with the physical side, going out there and being able to produce with the body, time after time.”

To this point, Young wasn’t known for his velocity. His changeup was his best pitch, helping deceive hitters into thinking Young’s cutter and four-seamer are a tick faster than they really are.

He hopes the instruction from Baltimore’s strength staff and those days in the Texas gym will improve his durability. But Young also studied his 27 appearances last season and saw he could improve his two-strike execution. His slider, an offering he fiddled with in 2024, could be a larger part of his repertoire.

“Last year, I mean, shoot, man, he still punched out over one per inning,” Handley said. “That’s what’s crazy. We can go back and really pick on some points where maybe he didn’t execute, and that’s where some of the excitement is, too. ‘Hey, man, you had a great season last year. Look at these points that are low-hanging fruit. We continue to work on those, your ceiling is going to raise.’”

That’s the plan, at least.

Young entered spring training in February not satisfied with a strong Triple-A display that earned him the organization’s minor league pitcher of the year award. He knew there was more required to take the next step.

“There’s always room to grow and adapt your game,” Young said. “I think just having another full year, just building off it, taking the success and learning from it.”

‘Oh, watch out’

Early in spring training, Handley watched Young pitch on TV. The catcher wasn’t on that road trip, but he kept tabs anyway. He’s been there for many of the major moments in Young’s career — good and bad — and Handley knew Young’s performances against major league hitters could help his standing in what was then a crowded rotation competition.

That’s when he noticed it: 97 mph, the radar gun read.

“If he can maintain his command and increase his velo, ‘oh, watch out,’” Handley thought. “It’s going to be really interesting to see where he goes from there.”

Maybe it was a hot gun. That’s not unusual in Florida ballparks. Maybe it was spring training adrenaline. Whatever the cause, it was a positive sign for how Young would look early this season.

“To be there right now this early feels good,” Young said at the time. “Honestly, it just stems from a good offseason, coming here fresh and ready to go.”

What was more important to Plassmeyer than a 97 on the radar gun, however, was where his low-end fastballs sat. Plassmeyer saw a floor that rose to 93 to 95 mph. And he still saw Young’s strong command of his pitches to both sides of the plate.

Young’s spring training performances were a mixed bag, as they are for many pitchers who use those outings to test pitch mixes and sequencing. At that stage of the season, the Orioles put less stock into the pitching line and more into the data they collect. And an increase in velocity is never a bad piece of data.

“I think a good sign he’s moving the way he wants to now,” Plassmeyer said. “He cleaned up some things physically. You see that higher-end output show up. But obviously, all starters know, if you can raise the floor, that’s probably the most important piece for him.”

Those velocity data points have held up early in the Triple-A Norfolk season, with a 96.1 mph fastball in his first start. The results came, too. In three starts, Young has allowed five earned runs in 16 1/3 innings.

The jump from Triple-A to the major leagues is extreme for any player. Manager Brandon Hyde noted that it’s hard to predict how a player will deal with the elevated competition and the elevated heart rate that come with a debut.

Young has had a long wait.

“It was super tough to go by and have all my friends and teammates move up, make the big leagues and all that, and I’m sitting in Florida, just trying to get healthy,” Young said last year, reflecting on his lengthy recovery from a second elbow surgery.

Now it’s his turn.