ATLANTA -- After a stellar start to 2026, Braxton Ashcraft was due for a hiccup or two in his second Major League season.
The 26-year-old right-hander entered Saturday’s start against the Braves with a 2.77 ERA over his first 12 starts this season (74 2/3 innings). In his last six starts prior to Saturday, Ashcraft recorded a 1.99 ERA (40 2/3 innings, nine earned runs), which was the seventh-lowest ERA among all National League pitchers with at least 30 innings of work since May 1.
Enter the MLB-best Braves who boast the league’s second-best offense.
Atlanta tagged Ashcraft for six earned runs on nine hits over five innings en route to a 6-3 victory over Pittsburgh, the second time in Ashcraft's 39 career outings that he’s allowed six or more earned runs.
The only other time Ashcraft allowed six earned runs in his career was on April 28 in an 11-7 loss to the Cardinals.
“It was just very poor execution,” Ashcraft said. “Especially with two strikes. I didn’t have my best stuff today. I wasn’t really able to spin the ball in the zone today for swing-and-miss. [That’s] a lot of what I feel like I do well. It just boils down to two-strike execution and execution in general.”
Atlanta struck early with two runs on four hits in the bottom of the first. It was the first time Ashcraft has given up runs in the first inning in his career. After Ronald Acuña Jr. and Mauricio Dubón hit back-to-back singles to lead off the first, Ozzie Albies hit his first of two sacrifice flies off Ashcraft, Dominic Smith singled and Austin Riley’s two-out double drove Dubón in.
Ashcraft had previously not allowed an extra-base hit with two outs and runners in scoring position. Ashcraft bounced back in the second, though, with a four-pitch inning. The unrelenting Braves, though, scored a run in the third and three in the fifth featuring Smith’s two-run opposite-field home run.
“I thought the stuff was good,” said manager Don Kelly. “[The Braves] put together some good at-bats against him in the first, third and fifth [innings]. Dom Smith got [a pitch] up and lifted [a home run] down the line to left. It looked like he had decent stuff. Maybe his execution is not where we’ve seen it in the recent starts from him. Unfortunately we couldn’t [land the pitches] today.”
The Braves produced plenty of hard contact against Ashcraft as Atlanta hitters had an average exit velocity of 93.1 mph. The Braves were especially successful against Ashcraft’s fastball as they tallied four hits, five hard-hit balls and posted an average exit velocity of 95.3 mph. Atlanta had an 11% whiff rate (2/19) against the four-seamer, which he threw 41% of the time.
Ashcraft seemingly struggled with location as one of Albies’ sacrifice flies was off a fastball up in the zone, as was Smith’s home run.
“It goes back to putting the ball where you want to or in the general area that you want to,” Ashcraft said. “I think height is a big deal. I know that I’m [going to] be over the plate.”
Ashcraft attributed his fastball usage to lack of offspeed command.
“It’s sort of a cat-and-mouse game, being able to keep guys off-balance,” Ashcraft said. “It starts with being able to offer four or five of your pitches in the zone whenever you need to. I didn’t land my curveball very often and the slider wasn’t really competitive. I was just kind of pitching with fastballs today and you can’t do that against a [team] that really hits fastballs well.”
Kelly, however, wasn’t worried about Ashcraft’s fastball velocity, which averaged 97.5 mph, 0.5 mph higher than his season average.
“It looked like he had the [velocity], it might have just been the execution,” Kelly said. “I haven’t had a chance to go back and look at any of the replays of the at-bats he had. He’s been really throwing the ball extremely well. He had moments today and just in those few innings [things] got away.”
Ashcraft shares Kelly’s low level of concern regarding the big picture.
“I think it’s just one of those days,” Ashcraft said. “I don’t think one outing, start [or] inning is worthy of going back to the drawing board and reinventing yourself. I still have a lot of confidence in what I do and how well I do it. That’s why we play 162 games. You’re going to have outings and games where you don’t have your best stuff. That’s just part of baseball.”