Immaculate innings are exceedingly rare. Brandon Young’s in Tuesday’s fifth inning might not, ultimately, be the most meaningful thing he accomplished on the night.

Young, the 26-year-old rookie right-hander, was all but guaranteed a pair of starts during this homestand before the All-Star break, even as he entered this week with four uninspiring major league starts on his ledger since his debut on April 19. His viability beyond that felt fair to question.

But it’s all of a sudden hard to see a world where Young doesn’t have a bit of a runway here in the Orioles’ rotation, and flipping that in a night is notable. He erased four starts worth of questions — about his ability to locate in the majors as well as he did in the minors, about which if any of his pitches could truly put away big league hitters and about the Orioles’ pitching development pipeline he represented — with a very good showing Tuesday.

That’s really hard to do. And he did it.

“It’s just kind of ticking up,” interim manager Tony Mansolino said. “The fastball had some life. The split was really good. The presence was probably even better, which is the best part to see.”

Young’s Orioles resume entering Tuesday featured so many hallmarks of a pitcher who didn’t yet have a foothold in the majors: a 7.02 ERA (albeit with a 4.78 expected ERA), a whopping 1.98 WHIP and 5.9 walks per nine. He was starting this week in Zach Eflin’s place in the rotation, and even as the Orioles were and are convinced of his potential as a major league starter, the evidence at this level wasn’t abundant.

He was never an overpowering prospect by any means, living in the low-to-mid 90s with good extension. He was able to locate his heater exactly where he wanted and tunnel his pitches well to help his changeup and curveball play up. In the majors, though, his ability to command the ball wasn’t as fine. He wasn’t in the strike zone as often either — he entered Tuesday with a 48.1% zone rate, down from 51.4% last year and 53.8% this year in Triple-A.

And when he came into the zone, he was punished for it to the tune of a .383 batting average against and .638 slugging percentage. None of his pitches were immune in the zone, and he wasn’t getting a ton of chase, either.

Except for his splitter. Despite his changeup being arguably his best pitch in years past, Young added the split-finger fastball on his own volition this winter. He discovered a grip he liked sitting on the couch fiddling with a baseball and unveiled the pitch as a surprise for the Orioles’ pitching coaches when he arrived at spring training, though he didn’t use it too much this year.

Still, the offering entered Tuesday with the highest chase rate in his arsenal — 34.8%. Six of those were two-strike whiffs, and since Young returned from shoulder discomfort, the Orioles have encouraged him to use it more.

“It’s been a good put-away pitch for me to both sides, lefties and righties,” Young said. “Once they saw that it has been a good pitch, they wanted me to increase the usage a little bit.”

All those questions — on the command carrying over, the put-away pitch and, to an extent, the system that spawned him — were answered when he unleashed the splitty on this sticky Baltimore night.

It began with a pair of two-strike splitters to the first batter he faced, setting up a 2-2 fastball at the bottom of the zone to strike out leadoff man Brandon Nimmo looking. With two outs and a 2-1 count two batters later, superstar Juan Soto flailed at a splitter down in the zone, and then Young went back to the well again to strike him out. The typically calm Young let out a yell on the mound as he did it.

He rode the pitch to his best start ever. In his historic fifth inning, with three strikeouts on nine pitches, he got three whiffs, including the first two strikeouts, on his splitter. He caught a little too much of the plate on one to Ronny Mauricio to open the sixth, resulting in a game-tying home run, and after falling behind on back-to-back doubles, he went back to the pitch three times against Francisco Lindor to help record his final out.

Young had six whiffs, including three of his strikeouts, on the pitch, and allowed a pair of hits on it.

Those swings Soto took in the first inning reminded me of the hell-hacks Giancarlo Stanton took on John Means’ changeup in the All-Star’s 2019 season debut at Yankee Stadium, the kind of swings that tell you an elite slugger was completely fooled. Means was able to keep that up, when healthy, for six years. It was a pitch that made him a legitimate major league starter, and while Young is more touted than Means was before his debut, this is a tough level for pitchers without a put-away pitch.

On this night, Young demonstrated he had one. It helped that his fastball velocity was up, too, averaging a season-high 94.4 mph. One of the quibbles with Young, particularly as he made his way back from Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery in 2024, was that his results could be uneven because his fastball velocity wasn’t always consistent from start to start, and the pitch was hittable in the zone in lower velocity bands.

In the 94-95 mph range, where it often was Tuesday, the pitch plays much better. Perhaps on a related note, 40 of his 66 pitches (60.6%) were in the strike zone.

Young pitched like he belonged, and proved that he did.

“There was a lot of confidence for him tonight,” Mansolino said. “The aura he kind of had on the mound, the presence he had on the mound — it was a little bit different.”