Talented Pirates pitcher facing uncertain role on 2026 pitching staff

Entering this offseason, the Pittsburgh Pirates were widely expected to add to their offense by trading away from their abundance of quality starting pitching depth. That has already happened twice, as the team shipped Johan Oviedo to Boston and Mike Burrows to Houston to bring three new bats into the fold.

That leaves the starting rotation pretty set in stone for the start of the 2026 season, pending perhaps one more external acquisition on the back end. One pitcher currently penciled into the rotation equation, though with some questions attached, is right-hander Braxton Ashcraft.

None of the questions or concerns surrounding Ashcraft are due to his talent. He made his debut last season and flashed what made him a second-round pick and top-100 prospect. In 26 games (but only eight starts), Ashcraft produced a sparkling 2.71 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, and a 94th-percentile barrel rate in his first trial run against MLB competition.

He was downright dominant once he settled into the rotation in August. In his eight starts (seven of which came after August 8), his ERA was a minuscule 2.16, and he limited opposing batters to an OPS of just .587. The only pitchers to top both of those marks as a starter in 2025 (in at least eight starts) were Paul Skenes, Nathan Eovaldi, Trevor Rogers, and fellow rookie Nolan McLean. That's some pretty, pretty good company.

So what's wrong with Ashcraft being in the rotation, if he's clearly good enough to thrive there? The answer to that question can be attributed to the laundry list of injuries he suffered as a minor leaguer –– after all, he didn't make his MLB debut until 2025 despite being drafted and beginning his professional career in 2018.

It remains to be seen how the Pirates manage Braxton Ashcraft's workload in 2026.

Ashcraft's first full professional season in 2019 was cut short due to surgery on his non-throwing shoulder (an injury that had plagued him since his days as a star high school wide receiver). He wouldn't have pitched competitively during the 2020 season anyway due to the COVID pandemic, but while doing remote bullpen work during that time, he tore his meniscus, which also required surgery. Then, 10 starts into his 2021 season, he underwent Tommy John surgery, which kept him out of game action until 2023.

Ashcraft made the jump from Double-A Altoona to Triple-A Indianapolis in 2024, but the injury bug persisted. Right forearm tightness resulted in three IL stints and cost him most of July and all of August and September, save for a one-inning cameo at the very end of the season.

The 2025 season marked Ashcraft's first injury-free campaign since 2019, and the results were obviously there, but the team still brought him along slowly and carefully—he started 18 games between Pittsburgh and Indianapolis but averaged 71 pitches and just under 4 2/3 innings in those starts.

Despite the gradual ramp-up, Ashcraft's 2025 innings total was still the largest he's ever managed in one season:

It's not reasonable to expect a pitcher with his injury history to make a huge year-to-year innings jump. It may benefit the Pirates to use Ashcraft as a bulk reliever –– where he's throwing two or three innings a couple times a week instead of five-plus innings every five or six days –– but that's much harder to envision with both Burrows and Oviedo no longer in the fold and Jared Jones not expected to return from injury until midseason. Even if the team adds a left-handed starter (as Ben Cherington is wont to do), that probably still keeps Ashcraft in the rotation.

While he's not Paul Skenes or Bubba Chandler and doesn't possess the healthy track record of Mitch Keller, Ashcraft still figures to be a significant component of what is expected to be a dominant Pirates pitching staff in 2026 and beyond. He thrived as a starting pitcher last season but likely won't be able to last in that role over an entire season in 2026. How the team manages his workload and whether any future additions affect his usage will be worth watching.