O's game blog: The series-decider between the Orioles and Rangers

Clubs have split the first two games of this series

The Orioles (34-45) have been in a win one, lose one mode for about a week or so now. They have split the first two games of their home series with Texas and the rubber match game is tonight at Oriole Park.

Since they began their series at Tampa Bay, the O’s have gone lose, win, lose, win, win, lose, lose and win. That is a 4-5 mark in those games.

Texas (39-41) is 16-25 on the road, 11-10 this month and 9-12 this season versus AL East teams.

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Young is back

The Orioles 2024 Minor League Pitcher of the Year, 26-year-old righty Brandon Young, tonight makes his third career start. He is 0-1 with an ERA of 6.23 in the first two games.

Young allowed three runs over four innings April 19 in his MLB debut versus Cincinnati. On April 26 at Detroit he allowed three runs in 4 2/3 innings.

While Young showed good control on the farm over his career, he walked eight in those two O’s games.

This season on the farm, over seven games, he has gone 2-1 with a 2.70 ERA. In 33 1/3 innings he walked just seven (1.89 walks per nine) with 36 strikeouts and a 0.99 WHIP.

In his two big league games, Young has used his four-seam fastball 36 percent of the time at an average velocity of 93.5 mph. He has thrown his cutter 23 percent, curveball 22 percent and changeup 19 percent.

Opponents have cleaned up on his cutter in this small two-game sample, batting .400 and slugging .800 against that pitch.

Young was not drafted by the O’s, but there is an asterisk of sorts in that comment. Due to the pandemic, the 2020 MLB Draft was limited to five rounds. The O’s signed Young after the draft as a free agent out of Louisiana-Lafeyette.

At the time of his MLB debut, Young was ranked No. 20 on the O’s top 30 prospects list via Baseball America. But in a recent new list, he was not in their latest top 30. He is ranked No. 19 by MLBPipeline.com.

His mound opponent tonight is two-time NL Cy Young Winner Jacob deGrom (7-2, 2.24 ERA) who is having a great year and is fifth in the AL in ERA, one spot ahead of Detroit’s Tarik Skubal.

deGrom over 15 starts has a 0.92 WHIP, allowing a .199 batting average and .563 OPS.

But he is on a strong roll now with 12 straight games allowing two runs or less. In this span, dating to mid-April, his ERA is 1.83, WHIP 0.84 and OPS against is .508.

He was the 2018 and 2019 NL Cy Young winner with the New York Mets.