Braxton Ashcraft Giving Pirates Reason to Believe in First MLB Season
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PITTSBURGH — A year is quite some time and even more so for a pitcher in the major leagues, which is something Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander Braxton Ashcraft can attest to.
Ashcraft marked his most recent outing as a year after his MLB debut, but in completely different circumstances than when he first arrived in the Pirates clubhouse.
He excelled on the mound, throwing 6.1 innings and allowing just one run, while posting five strikeouts in the 12-1 blowout of the Chicago Cubs at PNC Park on May 26.
Ashcraft made his MLB debut back on May 26, 2025 against the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he threw three scoreless innings in relief.
Both outings were impressive from Ashcraft and just how exceptionale he's been in that time frame.
Working Between Reliever and Starter Roles
Ashcraft was a starting pitcher in the minor leagues, before he made his MLB debut and spent a large chunk of 2025 coming out of the bullpen.
He eventually progressed to a starting role later in the season, finishing with a 2.71 ERA over 26 appearances and eight starts in 2025, serving as a promising arm for the future.
Ashcraft is now a key part of the Pirates starting rotation and is having an incredible season, with a 4-2 record over 11 starts, a 2.75 ERA over 68.2 innings pitched, 70 strikeouts to 17 walks, a .221 batting average allowed (BAA) and a 1.05 WHIP.
There was a lot of learning for Ashcraft when he first made it to MLB, learning the reliever role and improving his quality of pitching overall in that process, which has helped him understand and execute as a starter.
“I mean that’s a tough question. I mean, there’s a lot of ways that I have improved, there’s a few ways that I’ve regressed," Ashcraft said. "I think biggest thing is just getting ahead and being efficient. In the starting role, like that’s your main priority. Being efficient, getting guys out of the box early, getting weak contact.
“When I came up as a reliever, you got to punch guys out and I think in a lot of ways that’s helped me, get out of jams that I put myself in, but you know in all, I think it’s just more experience allows you to be a little more refined in a way that you go about your work, the way you get to certain locations with certain pitches in certain counts. It’s just maturity I guess.”
Ashcraft even looks at the differences between the two roles as important challenges for him in the major leagues, in terms of preparation, how the strike zone operates and how to work around that, plus finding other ways to take down hitters.
"It’s hard to say. You go into starts with the idea that you’re going to go deep in games," Ashcraft said. "You try and get into zones and try and get outs in the strike zone. Whereas as a reliever, with two strikes, you get strikes out of the strike zone. That’s one thing that I’ve tried to make a point of emphasis on: not making two-strike pitches too good. And just getting into better zones there.
"As a reliever, it forces you to get swing and miss. You have the autonomy to be able to chase swing and miss out of the zone. As a starter, again, with the priority being going deep in games, you try and get outs in the zone. But being able to pick times, pick at-bats, pick batters that you can expand with, that’s been something that I’ve started to work really hard on."
Learning to Deal With Serious Injuries
The Pirates actually took Ashcraft in the second round of the 2018 MLB Draft out of Robinson High School in Waco, Texas, with it almost seven years before he made his team debut.
Ashcraft missed out on a great deal of time with injury, which set back his debut and his development in the minor leagues.
This includes a latarjet procedure on his right shoulder in 2019, a torn meniscus in 2020 and then Tommy John surgery in late 2021, which prevented him from pitching again until 2023.
Ashcraft is already up to 68.2 innings pitched and should easily break his career-high last season of 118 innings between Triple-A Indianapolis and the Pirates.
There's always concerns with a pitcher like Ashcraft and the potential for another serious injury with his history, but he's not worried about it that much and has felt great so far in 2026.
He also noted how he learned how to adjust from playing every sport, including starring as a wide receiver in football, and started treating his body better, which has helped him a great deal this season.
"...My body feels great," Ashcraft said. "Better than it has ever in my career really. You go through all these injuries and all these rehabs and you just learn a lot about what your body needs for certain things, whenever it feels a certain type of way, what you need to do to get it back right.
“So as crappy as those injuries and stuff are, it’s a blessing in disguise. I came up as a young high school guy that had no idea how to take care of my body and I think a lot of that, plus the stuff that I’ve dealt with and the life that Iived as a kid, I dealt with that as an adult, a young adult and those rehabs I took them seriously. Learned how to take care of my body, learned how to recognize certain things in terms of how I’m doing and learn how to address it and get ahead of stuff.
“So, to that, I think that with that knowledge, with that understanding of my body, it makes it really easy to feel good every fifth day or sixth day, whatever it might be, just looking forward to, what is it 11, another 29 starts.”
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Dominic writes for Pittsburgh Pirates On SI, Pittsburgh Panthers Pn SI and also, Pittsburgh Steelers On SI. A Pittsburgh native, Dominic grew up watching Pittsburgh Sports and wrote for The Pitt News as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, covering Pitt Athletics. He would write for Pittsburgh Sports Now after college and has years of experience covering sports across Pittsburgh.