Braxton Ashcraft

Mitch Keller got hurt.

Braxton Ashcraft's been shut down.

That's not supposed to shut you down as a rotation.

That's not supposed to be a white flag for surrender.

And I would be surprised to see them do anything other than kind of dial him back, wind him down.

for the rest of the year now otherwise Braxton Ashcraft I know they put on the IL they didn't rule him out for the year I'd be pretty surprised given again his transition to the rotation if he makes another start this season if he does it might be like a couple of innings at the end of the year not really worth rostering at this point in my view but the hope is for the Pirates that someone like Jared Jones have already been limited enough that they don't feel the need to do it anymore and But the challenge is when you're out of contention and you fought for as long as the Pirates did, a team that was in contention and bought at the deadline and tried, they would have pushed a whole load of players beyond their physical limits that now they're going to have to try and wind back.

So they're, oh, well, we threw you more innings than we'd have wanted in August.

We're out of contention now in September, though, so we'll make up for it by resting you a bit.

You weren't going to let him just go when he came back.

You knew Bubba Chandler and Braxton Ashcraft were not going to be able to go a full season of innings.

And Ashcraft, who has been incredible this year, ends up getting some arm soreness and he's not going to be able to finish out the season because he ended up throwing a ton of innings because he was so good, right? And he was so efficient.

um but you've gotten to this point now where if the pirates were pushing into the playoffs right if they were one game out right now you try and tell me you're trying to make a playoff push with only three starting pitchers that's going to be really really difficult that's where the pirates are right now i wanted to get the negative part out of the way that i think this is something that really needs to be addressed in the off season If you're not willing to have Christian Curtis and Wilbur Dottel and Antoine Kelly start in the big leagues, you got to fill the rotation somehow because you need five starting pitchers if you're going to make a playoff push in September.

Is that fair? Do you agree with me? No,

So you don't want to take that away in order to try to, you know, whatever it is, keep guys healthy or get them deeper into games.

You don't want to take away what makes them special.

However, these three guys pushing forward, Michael, this is such a good sign because you know Ashcraft has been great.

I'd think we can agree that that's pretty good.

Now, take that 3.78 and put it next to the 3.65 of Braxton Ashcraft, and all we do is sing, and rightly so, about the year that Ashcraft had.

Well, let's be a little bit fair here, okay? These are similar.

Skenes has 185 strikeouts.

I don't know.

This has been a, a rough year, and some of it was, you know, young Bubba Chandler, Braxton Ashcraft, you know, being asked to go six full years as a starter f- in the majors for the first time.

That's one thing.

There's been a lot of speculation about, you know, what Bill Murphy's impact has been around the team.

I think we can agree that that's pretty good.

Take that 3.78 and put it next to the 3.65 of Braxton Ashcraft.

All we do is sing, and rightly so, about the year that Ashcraft had.

I

Man, I thought I had good bids, but some people just came with some crazy money.

on uh on this past week so i needed pitching got cal quantrill dropped braxton ashcraft who's on the il for the season uh four to two in that one i picked up uh hagan smith dropped gauge jump four to two or cal quantrill's five to four hagan smith was four to two and i want to get some context here because ben and i were texting about this last night he's kind of asking if hagan smith is stretched out it's I broke this down on the fab show a bit, but I know I raced through it.

It's not so much broke.

He's stretched out.