Pirates' Braxton Ashcraft Doesn't Hold Back With Frustrations
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PITTSBURGH — For most pitchers, a five-inning, two-earned-run start against a major league lineup would be cause for a quiet nod of satisfaction. For Braxton Ashcraft, it was cause for frustration.
The Pittsburgh Pirates’ young right-hander stood at his locker inside PNC Park after the final out of a disheartening 8-3 loss to the Miami Marlins, his jaw tight and his words even tighter.
On the surface, his line looked respectable: five innings, five hits, two earned runs, two walks, four strikeouts. But Ashcraft wasn’t interested in surface-level consolation. He saw only the inefficiency that forced him from the game after five innings and 90 pitches, the extended at-bats that drove his count up, and a second consecutive start that left him feeling like he could have pitched better.
“It’s frustrating,” Ashcraft said, his voice flat. “I think just the all-encompassing way of explaining it is it just boils down to execution. If you don’t execute, at-bats get extended, innings get extended, pitch count gets up and you don’t allow yourself to go deep into games – and that’s the beginning, middle and end to that story.”
The frustration is not born from a single bad night. It is the accumulated weight of two weeks that have tested the 26-year-old’s identity as a pitcher. Last Saturday in Atlanta, Ashcraft endured the worst outing of his brief big-league career, surrendering a career-high six earned runs and nine hits to a Braves lineup that feasted on every mistake. He walked off the mound in Truist Park searching for answers.
He thought he had found them before taking the ball against Miami. The game plan was sharp. The confidence was real. And then the first inning happened.
Miami hitters fouled off pitches, worked counts full, and forced Ashcraft to nibble rather than attack. By the time he recorded the third out of the fifth inning, his pitch count had ballooned, and Pirates manager Don Kelly had no choice but to go to the bullpen. The Pirates were still in the game — catcher Endy Rodríguez had just launched a solo homer to tie the game — but Ashcraft would not be around to see the finish.
Frustration with Execution
“Again, just execution,” he said, repeating the word like a mantra. “Had a plan that I was very confident in, we were very confident in. I just didn’t execute the plan. There’s two ways of looking at it, right? You give yourself and your team a chance to win the ballgame but, obviously, not just me but we all have higher expectations for ourselves. I have super high expectations for myself. When I don’t realize those expectations and fall short of them, it’s extremely frustrating.”
What eats at Ashcraft most is the distance between what he has been and what he has shown lately. Earlier this season, he carved through lineups with a ruthless efficiency built on pounding the zone and trusting his stuff.
That pitcher, he said, does not nibble. That pitcher does not extend innings with passive pitches on the edges. That pitcher, in his own words, has an identity — and over the last two starts, he has abandoned it.
“I can’t speak for anybody else, but I can say in the last two outings definitely that the execution of my plan, being able to put pitches where I want to rather than nibble on the edges — that’s not my identity as a pitcher,” Ashcraft said. “That’s not the way I’ve had success this season and in my short time in the big leagues. I just have to get back to that identity.”
Bullpen Woes
The loss dropped the Pirates to an even 35-35, a .500 record that feels more fragile than the number suggests. While Ashcraft was dissecting his own shortcomings, the bullpen imploded behind him, surrendering six runs in the seventh and eighth innings to turn a winnable game into a rout. But when asked about the relief corps’ struggles, Ashcraft refused to point fingers. Instead, he offered a veteran’s perspective that belied his relative inexperience.
“I don’t think the confidence is swayed from the beginning of the year,” he said. “There’s a lot of effort being put in every single day to be the best players — not just the guys in the bullpen but us as starters, the guys playing the field and at the plate. We’ve seen a lot of success out of everybody on this team. There’s no doubt in my mind that that success will continue. It’s a long season. It’s 162 games. I think we all believe in this clubhouse that there will be some bonus games at the end of the year.”
He paused, then added: “It’s hard to put too much weight on a bad week or a bad couple of weeks. There’s ebbs and flows. That’s the game of baseball. There’s been failures and there’s been success on complete opposite ends of that spectrum. I think with the room that we’ve got in here from top to bottom, the success will outweigh the failure.”
For now, though, Ashcraft is stuck in the ebb. He is healthy, his stuff is intact, and the raw results against Miami were far from disastrous. But the man who expects to dominate is tired of merely surviving. He plans to spend the days before his next turn in the rotation staring into the mirror — preparing to fix the execution that has slipped away.
Because in his mind, giving the Pirates a chance to win last night was not enough. Not for Ashcraft, a pitcher with a legitimate chance to make the All-Star Game this season. He wants to leave the game with no doubts that he will get a W next to his name in the box score.
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Ethan Merrill is from Grand Rapids, MI, and brings with him a diverse background of experiences. After graduating from Michigan State University with a degree in journalism, he worked with the Arizona Diamondbacks for three seasons before settling in the Pittsburgh area in 2020. With a passion for sports and a growing connection to his community, Ethan brings a fresh perspective to covering the Pittsburgh Pirates.