Happy Easter from all of us at NS9. The Pirates are 5-3, on a four-game winning streak, Bob Nutting is signing traffic cones for fans and Konnor is here. This is fun isn’t it? Let’s keep it rolling as we check out today’s updated NS9 Bullpen Breakdown as the Pirates try and sweep the O’s this afternoon.
Dennis Santana got the win yesterday after another efficient scoreless inning. He’s pitched back-to-back games and they likely won’t want to pitch him a third straight if they don’t have to. Hunter Barco followed Carmen Mlodzinski after his start and went 2.1 scoreless on 45 pitches. He’s now thrown 92 pitches in the past five days and he’ll be unavailable today. We are still waiting on Jose Urquidy‘s second appearance of the season. He’s super fresh and being treated like someone they have to roster but don’t really want to use at this point. I would say he’s just going to be mop up duty for now, but then again he has a save on the season after pitching in extra innings in New York. I’m guessing we’ll likely see Justin Lawrence today as he has not pitched the past three days.
Today’s starter for the Bucs is Braxton Ashcraft who will make his second start this season. His first starter versus the Reds went very well as he tossed 6.0 innings with two runs allowed and four strikeouts. He did’t get any run support in that one so let’s change that today. This will be just Ashcraft’s 5th start at PNC Park. It sure seems like he’s been here longer, hasn’t it? Most pitchers will have better numbers at home than on the road especially when you pitch at a neutral park that leans toward the pitcher, but Ashcraft has a better ERA on the road so far in his career (2.53 on the road compared to 3.00 at home). He faced the Orioles once last season and allowed one run in three innings of work out of the pen. Something to look for with Ashcraft is he threw his curveball the most in his first start at 33% of the time and his most used pitch last season, the slider, he threw the least out of his four pitches. I’ll be interested to see if he sticks to that or mixes is up again more so in line with his 2025 numbers.
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