What Do the Pirates Do With Braxton Ashcraft Now?

Perhaps it was just the baseball gods giving a little bit of karmic realignment for the Pirates, but Jared Jones was brilliant on Thursday.

Seven scoreless innings, attacked, it was, in my opinion, the best we have seen, the four-seamer and the slider work in tandem.

The Pirates needed a start like that.

Not just because it completed a sweep and got them above 500, but because of the storm cloud that was hanging over on Thursday.

Braxton Ashcraft is going on the injured list, and while we don't know what his status in 2026 is guaranteed right now, it is the type of scare that we have all been secretly dreading this entire season.

Good morning, and welcome to OffBeat, here on North Shore Nine, presented by FanDuel.

My name is Alex Stumpf, and this is a daily look at your Pittsburgh Pirates.

Braxton Ashcraft was placed on the 15-day injured list on Thursday with right arm discomfort, retroactive to September 7th.

Manager Don Kelly told reporters in Chicago, including Jose Negrón, DK Pittsburgh Sports, that they did not see any structural damage.

So this is a wait-and-see type deal.

It's not out of the realm of possibility that we see him in a Pirates uniform again before the end of the season, being on that mound at PNC Park.

But it is a blow because he has been the Pirates' most consistent starter this year and their best starting pitcher, in my opinion.

He has been someone who has time in and time out, given good long outings.

And this is someone who, even back in May, there was talk of like, well, what's his inning limit going to be?

How much work is he going to do?

And while the Pirates never had, like, a limit, most of us thought, like, that 160 to 180 range, 180 would have been very aggressive.

But, like, the 160 is like, yeah, that'd be a good step forward for him this year.

That would position himself well for 2027.

He got to 165 and a third.

With a 14-6 record, a 365 ERA, 173 strikeouts, he was pretty darn good.

And it has been a really good season.

I shouldn't say it all in the past tense because we don't know for certain if his season has wrapped.

But for someone who has had so many arm injuries whenever he was coming up through the minor leagues, and someone who has never thrown this many innings before, it was always a concern.

And I know there are going to be people who, it's real easy to second guess here.

Why did they have him keep throwing?

Why didn't they move him to the bullpen?

Why didn't they do a midseason shutdown?

blah.

they see the house burning and they're going to be capped in hindsight for a little bit.

Honestly, and this honestly, at what point this year did you look at Braxton Ashcraft and think he has to be shut down?

We have heard conversations, in the Pirates' stratosphere about like, oh, should Paul Skenes be shut down?

The season's pretty much over.

he's not pitching well.

The velocity's down.

What do you do?

Jared Jones, what do you do with him?

his first year back, Mitch Keller, obviously he actually did have the season ending injury.

There was no point whenever people were saying you have to shut Braxton Ashcraft down because he looks so strong.

He looks so dominant.

Even in that last outing that he had against America's team, the Los Angeles Angels, the first time through the order, he was brilliant.

And it was the second time through the order that he started to waver and gave up some runs.

And I will admit, in that podcast that, we released on Monday, I said that he looked like he was tiring a little bit.

And I will admit, that was my takeaway of someone who had thrown over 160 innings for the first time in his professional career.

Second time through the order, fourth up, it just seemed to make a lot of sense of like, that's why the stuff diminished mid-game.

And instead, it turns out that he was dealing with something.

And we don't know the severity of it.

Nothing structural is the headline news here.

That is, if nothing being broken, nothing being torn, nothing needs surgery.

they still have to check stuff out.

But that is the absolute best case scenario.

And honestly, if you want to run the whole gamut here of what realistic outcomes are, him finishing the year on the injured list, but being able to have a normal offseason, not have to rehab, just being able to prepare, get ready for 2027,

and not have, any other extracurriculars, that's like a 90th percentile, like best case scenario.

You want him to be healthy above all else, because he is such an important part of what this team is trying to build, not just for 2026, but beyond.

He is someone who would be in all 30 major league rotations, and would be important to all 30 major league teams.

And he is someone that you absolutely need to take care of.

With him on the injured list, Khristian Curtis, I think, really should get a look.

I'm planning on writing something soon on book row bucks on him.

I really love the cutter.

I think it's a difference maker for him.

I guess it doesn't have to be straight starts.

You could, make him bullpen games where he goes four or five as the bulk guy.

You could just give him a traditional opener.

You could just start him.

I'm also looking at Antwone Kelly, the guy who was called up in Nashcraft's spot, as a candidate to also get those types of outings.

But those are short-term solutions.

That's just trying to help 2026 and maybe, winning a game or two to try to help those postseason odds.

What goes on in 2027 and beyond?

We're going to talk about that in a second.

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I'm looking at 2027 with Braxton Ashcraft.

There's no ambiguity.

Like, whenever he was called up last year, and it was as a reliever, I thought, well, maybe he, that's just the path.

It's a very common path.

A high, second-round draft pick with great stuff, has arm injuries, converts to the bullpen up at the major league level.

That's a tale that's been told plenty of times.

And then he starts, and even going into this year, I'm like, he could be great.

we talked, in those early offbeat episodes about how I thought he was going to be the Pirates' number two starter.

But, even in the back of my head, like, if this goes awry, or if it's clear that he can't handle the workload over the course of the year, the bullpen was a backup plan.

I think that's pretty much put to bend now.

You view this guy as a starting pitcher for years to come.

And a big part of his success this year, why he took this huge step from, like, promising rookie to all-star, was that he had a normal offseason.

And he was able to not just rehab, he was able to refine some stuff.

He was able to work on the curve.

He was able to work on the changeup.

And those pitches looked a lot better.

It was a guy who would just throw effective innings, fast innings.

So whenever we say 165 innings pitched, there weren't a ton of those high-stress innings where he's thrown 25, 30 pitches, and he's battling to just get that third out.

No.

Like, he was effective.

He was dominant.

He was doing everything he wanted to see.

That's why, again, I just can't, for lack of a better word, blame anyone in the organization for this.

Because even that last start, he looked great.

But without him, this rotation now is Paul Skenes, Jared Jones, who also is, rehabbing back, coming back from his own arm injury, and Bubba Chandler.

And the rest are bullpen games or whatever they do with Khristian Curtis or Antwone Kelly or whatever.

This is a team that the 2026 path, even whenever they're winning, it just never seems like it ever gets much easier.

Those first couple months and, the bullpen losses and the ways that they lost some games early, I think is still haunting right now.

The injuries, not having Oneil Cruz and Konnor Griffin for a good chunk of the season.

These are all just little paper cuts that just added up after a while.

This would be huge.

If Braxton Ashcraft is out, not just for the rest of the year, but if it impacts his 2027 in any way.

Because, there's going to be a lockout.

I imagine the spring training is going to be very similar to what we saw in 2022, where at some point, they're just going to reach an agreement.

They're going to say, all right, everyone, you got 48 hours to get to Bradenton, Florida.

And it'll be an abbreviated spring training, and there'll be concerns.

That's why I, look, health is the number one priority here.

And maybe in what would that be, like 12 days or so, we'll have a much better understanding of what the Pirates' postseason odds are if they're, still in that mix, if they're still in the discussion.

If they're in a spot where they're, like, two games back, it's like, and he's good to go, yeah, go for it.

But I candidly am at a spot where it's like, look, I don't think they were ever playing with fire, but if they bring him back, that would feel like it to me.

That would feel like pressing your luck.

There has to be a hell of a carrot at the end of the stick, in my opinion, for Braxton Ashcraft to pitch again, for it to be worth it.

Because I care about Braxton Ashcraft, the person, more than what Braxton Ashcraft is going to give in a performance in a game or two down the stretch.

This is just too important of a guy to potentially risk.

So we're going to be very, I'm very interested to see what these next couple weeks look like for him.

And I wouldn't hate it if he's made his last pitch of the year because it was a hell of a season.

It's the type of year that we thought this whole rotation was going to be built around.

We were going to see guys like that all around.

And while we've seen, like, Bubba Chandler take a lot of steps this year, we've seen Jared Jones have these moments of brilliance.

Like, Braxton Ashcraft was even more so than Paul Skenes, in my opinion.

The guy that every time he took the ball, you felt like he was in control.

That he was going to be able to turn in a good start.

The only exceptions, really, were whenever his routine was, messed up.

Either whenever he went on the bereavement list or, there was that hiccup midseason.

Like, any time that there was something, whenever he did turn in a bad outing, like, there was a very clear, oh, well, that could explain it.

And then the outing after that, he looked like his normal self.

That's the type of guy that this team needs for years to come.

And nothing structural, no structural injury at this time is the headline.

That's the most important thing.

But I don't know if it's worth pressing for the rest of 2026.

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