Pirates Insider Podcast, Episode 28 (6/24 vs. Mariners)

Braxton Ashcraft was outstanding and continued to fill up the strike zone. The Pirates offense erupted, as well. It all led to a lopsided win over the Mariners. Jason Mackey breaks down what made Ashcraft's outing so unique, as well as what he's been doing so well this season. We also got some news on Konnor Griffin and what could happen with Jared Jones' next start.

Transcript

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What's up, everybody? Good morning, and this is the Pirates Insider Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Mackey, talking to you from PNC Park after an 11-1 Pirates victory over the Seattle Mariners. So much to get into. A really uh top-to-bottom excellent performance from the Pirates. Uh slow start, and I'm going to talk about that specifically with the pitching side. But the offense gets going with five runs in the fourth inning. They add on in the seventh and the eighth. Ends up being a breezy win. Uh whole kind whole bunch of good stuff from the offense. They finish with 15 hits, six doubles. Ryan O'Hearn gets right. He has four hits, three doubles, three RBIs, two runs scored. Andy Rodriguez, a strong game behind the plate, finishes with two hits, including a double, three RBIs, a run scored. As Marilyn Valdez has two hits, including a double, an RBI, and a run scored. Brian Reynolds, two hits, a double, an RBI, and a run scored. Reynolds, by the way, extended his hitting streak to 14 straight games. He's been on base safely in 29 straight. That's the longest such streak of Reynolds' career. It's actually the longest for a pirate, I believe, since Jason Bay in 2005. Can't say enough good things about the offense. We will loop back to that, but I don't want to bury the lead any more than I already have because I want to talk about Braxton Ashcraft in with this one and what he was able to do. So impressed with Braxton Ashcraft. I don't want us to overlook him any more than we already are. I still feel like he doesn't get enough credit, but tonight, six innings, gives up one earned run, five hits, doesn't walk anybody, ten strikeouts. So for Ashcraft, get this. I love this stat. In the modern era, that's since 1901, he's the only Pirates pitcher to have two games where he doesn't walk anybody and he strikes out at least 10. He also did that against the Minnesota Twins in late May. I believe that was May 28th or May 29th, excuse me. Let me double check that just to make sure. But Ashcraft has been so good. It's his 10th quality start, and it was actually May 31st against the Twins that he did that. But I want to talk a little bit about Ashcraft's outing and what made it special for me because the way it started, it did not look like one of those nights for Braxton Ashcraft. Actually, the first three Mariners to face him all had singles. Julio Rodriguez was the third batter of the game, and he scorched a single at 109.2. And at that point, it obviously wasn't looking great for Ashcraft. And I'm thinking, oh man, is this the time where he kind of crashes to earth? And not even close. Not even close. And a lot of credit to Andy Rodriguez, kind of some old school baseball stuff going on. After the game, Braxton and Andy both talked about Andy reading swings and seeing what the Mariners were doing and being able to kind of adjust the game plan on the fly. And they realized that his curveball was a really good weapon, which was smart because it is. Ashcraft's curveball has been very, very good, but basically changing the sequencing a little bit. Um, and if they were looking for heat early in counts to get them off of that, and they're relying more on breaking balls. Um, the final percentages were largely similar to what Ashcraft has done throughout the season, but it's kind of how you get to that point. He threw his curveball 34% of the time. On the year, it's about 25%. So they did up it a little bit. He threw slightly less, slightly fewer sinkers. That was at 10%. Normally he's at about 16%. Everything else was about similar, but it's how it was executed. It's how it was sequenced. And that part of Ashcraft's outing, I absolutely loved. I thought it was intelligent. He's such a fun guy to watch pitch. That's the thing about Ashcraft that stands out to me. I mean, he has dominant stuff, right? You don't get where he is right now without really good stuff. But he fills up the zone, he works fast. I wrote my story for MLB.com. It almost reminds me a little bit of Ray Miller work fast, throw strikes, change speeds, all of that. I almost want him to like get that and put it on a t-shirt, but it's just such intelligent pitching. And guys that throw strikes. I remember talking to Ryan O'Hearn about this earlier in the season. You love to play behind them. They keep fielders in the game. And Ashcraft, I mean, he is the model of efficiency where he strikes out 10 and he still only throws 86 pitches. He doesn't walk people. He's not afraid to challenge hitters. It's absolutely incredible. And he also misses bats. That's another thing that we saw tonight. He racked up 15 whiffs. He threw first pitch strikes to 18 of 23. If you want to talk strike percentage, and Ashcraft is the best in Major League Baseball at that, at about 69%. But tonight, he throws first pitch strikes to 68 of 86. That works out to a 79.1% strike rate. That is the career best for Braxton Ashcraft. In this start, he goes over the century mark in strikeouts. He now has 107. He's tied with Paul Skeens in that department on the season. Ashcraft, I believe, is 7-3. Let me double-check that number. Yes, 7-3. Dropped his ERA to 3.07. I don't know. It's his 10th quality start. I mentioned that earlier. That's tied with Shohei Otani. Only four pitchers in Major League Baseball have been better. I don't know if the Pirates can get this many all-stars. And not to turn this conversation into a Pirates All-Star conversation, but you know, Skeens is going to go. Brandon Lau probably should go. You can make a case for Brian Reynolds, and the Pirates aren't going to get four. So I it it is tough. It's a tall hill to climb. Maybe if somebody pulls out, you know, because they can't pitch or whatever. But I just want to make the point of how fun it is to watch Ashcraft develop, how fun it is to watch him go about his business. He thinks when he pitches. He's not afraid of the strike zone. He goes right at guys. The curveball is absolutely elite. I kind of fell down the rabbit hole of looking up his curveball and some of the associated numbers with it when I was writing. Get this. I've cited baseball savant's run value before. It's sort of a number to attach to a pitch to tell you how effective it is. I know it seems a little like stat nerdy, but if you look specifically at Ashcraft's curveball, it is the metrically anyway, the third best curveball in all of Major League Baseball. Ben Brown of the Cubs and Scott Barlow of the Athletics are the only two with better curveballs according to baseball savant's run value. Opponents are hitting just 123 against Ashcraft's curveball. They're whiffing over 40% of the time. That was one thing that Andy Rodriguez talked about post-game said. His velocity and breaking balls, it was amazing. The way he executed, really, really good. By the way, another subtopic of this game, Andy Rodriguez and Braxton Ashcraft have a pretty good chemistry together. And as the Pirates trade Joey Barth to the Atlanta Braves, getting back Hunter Stratton, turning things over to Andy and Henry, you're sort of looking for how this water might find its level. Obviously, Andy's going to play a lot because he's been hitting. Had another big game today, continually impressed with Andy on the season, hitting 263 with an 845 OPS. That's absolutely your starting catcher, regardless of anything else. But it's neat to see him and Ashcraft work together. That happened quite a bit, and those two made quite a tandem against the Mariners. So a lot to like from Braxton Ashcraft's outing. That's who I wrote about at MLB.com. Make sure you check that out. But I do want to talk about the offense just a little bit more because I was impressed. I mentioned this earlier. The Pirates found themselves in a one-zero hole in the top of the first thanks to Julio Rodriguez, but they bounced back in a big way in the fourth. That started with Andy Rodriguez, gets a one-two sweeper down, cracks it for a two-run double. Again, this is the bottom of the fourth. Tyler Callahan adds on. He triples to the right center field gap. That came on a first pitch fastball inside. Jake Magum adds to it, uh, gets a single. That was uh on a one-one pitch. Uh it was a four-seamer up and in, actually, not uh not exactly a pitch in uh Magum's nitro zone, but shoots it into left field for a single. As Marilyn Valdez, uh, who actually came into the game because Spencer Horwitz is dealing with um, what was it, left hamstring discomfort? He's day-to-day being examined uh and all that fun stuff. Hopefully Spencer Horwitz comes out of it okay. But that ups the Pirates lead to 5'1 in the bottom of the seventh. They get back at it. Ryan O'Hearn, I'll talk about him in a second, but uh fastball down in the zone. That's one of his doubles. And then Andy Rodriguez adds to it a single, another fastball. He jumps on that. That was one-two, middle of the plate. That gave the Pirates an 8-1 win, 8-1 lead. Tyler Callahan adds a sacrifice fly to make it 9-1. And the Pirates are off and running at that point. But really good at bats from the Pirates, a really good approach all night against Brian Wu. I liked what they talked about post-game, saying uh they were basically looking to hit line drives because of how his fastball played. They weren't trying to hit home runs. Good. Good. Exactly what you want to see. Uh, very smart at bats, and it worked out in the Pirates' favor very much so. Ryan O'Hearn, let's talk about him for a second. We talked to O'Hearn post-game, and I asked him a question about uh how do you kind of make sense of your season? Um, because it looked like he found something in Sacramento, it disappeared. He snapped an 0 for 15 last night, it came back early from the quad, looked really good, then goes in the tank. There's just been a lot of peaks and valleys with him. And he said, Yeah, it's been kind of weird. It's been frustrating. Uh and he said, and I don't know if O'Hearn is messing with us. He might be, or he might be serious, I'm not sure. But uh, he talked about the um hitting coach Matt Haig and sort of the biomechanic staff and uh the people in charge of these things noticing his hands were four inches somewhere else. And remember earlier in the season he talked about his, you know, one of his feet being like six degrees off or something. Like it was just this hyper-specific answer, but it's whatever. It worked. Um, I'm not gonna go up in uh Ryan O'Hearn's head and crawl around, but if it's working for him, go cool. You get four hits, three doubles, you can do and say what you want. Um, but I've been most impressed with O'Hearn this whole season. And I asked Don Kelly about this post-game, um, just about how he's carried himself in good and bad. Um, when O'Hearn is not hitting, you don't know. It's such a cool veteran leader thing. Like he's just the exact same guy, good, bad, indifferent, doesn't matter. Such a beneficial thing to this team. They really needed somebody like that. And, you know, I just look up and down this lineup. There's so many guys like that. Brian Reynolds, same way. Brandon Lau, same way. Andy Rodriguez has been hitting. Tyler Callahan added a big hit. Jake Mangum uh entered the game hitting over 300 or close to 300. He was at 299. Uh, he picks up a hit tonight. The Pirates just, they're finding offense in a lot of places. They did it tonight again, very impressive. And then when you pair it with Braxton Ashcraft and what he did, you definitely have something. All right. One more point to make, uh, I, although I do want to add Connor Griffin on the end of it. Just the pitching decision with Carmen Majinski, I know it it seemed to rub some people the wrong way. And I was a little surprised they stuck with Majinski despite it being a blowout. Uh, he pitched the final three innings of this one, didn't give up any runs, gave up two hits, struck out three. Majinski pitched great. That's not the question, but you know, do you want to spoil him in a lopsided game like this? And I certainly get that criticism. Um, the only thing I would kind of add is that they are trying to keep him semi-stretched out as a starter. If they have something going on, they want to be able to drop him back into the rotation, hence why they don't want him having like one inning appearances. Uh, but I can't understand the argument to say, look, we should have just got out of this after one inning. You know, he'll he'll be available in one day. Now's not the time, but um that's at least the reasoning for why they're doing what they're doing. And I also think it's interesting. We asked Don Kelly after the game, does this kind of mean that Jared Jones probably gonna make his next start? And uh Kelly seemed optimistic. He said it's trending in that direction. So good news on Jared Jones. Um, but Carmen Majinski will be unavailable, I would imagine, for the next three days. Connor Griffin, he played seven innings at shortstop with double A Altuna last night. Things looked really good. Surprise, surprise, had a triple a home run, a walk, was hit by a pitch, three RBIs, and three runs scored. He did have a fielding error, but I guess we'll we'll let that one go for the time being. But uh Connor looks pretty good. Who knows? I think he's gonna stay in Altoona and uh maybe look for him to get back here on the weekend. That'll be a lot of fun. This offense is gonna get even better. I also saw Neil Cruz doing some throwing in the outfield that at least qualifies as some sort of baseball activities, but uh, he's still a couple weeks away. Series finale tomorrow, Baba Chandler on the mound. He's two and seven with 4.62 ERAs, pitched a lot better in his recent starts, pounding the strike zone as well. He'll be opposed by Bryce Miller, 3 1 with a 158 ERA. I'll be back at the park 12 35 afternoon game. Looking forward to it. Thanks so much for listening to the Pirates Insider podcast. Make sure you subscribe. You can get all of these every day. Look forward to recapping that one with you, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.