ST. LOUIS -- Braxton Ashcraft had a simple answer to what felt good during his start on Thursday.
“Nothing,” he said.
Calling it “a grind,” Ashcraft continued to make the most of his recent audition for a more permanent role in the Pirates starting rotation.
Ashcraft threw 73 pitches, faced 21 batters and went 5 2/3 innings -- all career highs -- in the Pirates’ 4-1 loss to the Cardinals on Thursday. It was the fourth straight start for Ashcraft, and fifth overall, after he started the season in the Pittsburgh bullpen where he made 16 appearances.
The 25-year-old rookie said he learned a lot about himself through the grind.
“The starts that you feel good, you go out and you expect to have success,” Ashcraft said. “That's not saying that any outing that you have, you don't expect to have success. But the times where you may not have your best stuff, which is hardly ever, that's what baseball is about.
"That's what being a pitcher is about and that's what pitching for a long time in the big leagues is about. … So being able to go out and still go 5 2/3 [innings] and be relatively efficient and give myself a chance to record a quality start, like it's a good step in the right direction.”
Ashcraft struck out five, including the side in the second, and walked one.
“I thought he did extremely well, and [he] earned that opportunity to go back out there in the sixth,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said of Ashcraft. “Fastball was working, had the off-speed pitches working. I think even mixed in a couple changeups, and did a really nice job.”
Ashcraft allowed four hits, snapping his streak of allowing three or fewer hits in each of first three starts. The fourth hit, an infield single by Lars Nootbaar, ironically, came on Ashcraft’s 66th pitch of the game which set a new high for him in pitches.
More importantly, though, Ashcraft allowed just one run and since joining the rotation on Aug. 9, he has a 1.42 ERA in four starts.
“It was nice to get into the sixth inning again,” Ashcraft said. “I think it's been five months since I've done that, so being able to do that and still maintain what stuff I did have today and get some quick outs aside from I guess the first inning, it's good. There's a lot of good to take from today.”
After allowing that lone run in the third, Ashcraft retired seven straight hitters before Nootbaar’s single to lead off the sixth. Ashcraft got the next two batters to finish on a high note.
Ashcraft has certainly made his case amid a crowded field for one of two spots in the Pirates’ rotation as the season enters its final month. Mike Burrows, Carmen Mlodzinski and most recently baseball’s top pitching prospect Bubba Chandler, fresh off his first career win on Wednesday, are building strong resumes as well.
“They're going out there and competing and pitching extremely well and making it tough on us,” Kelly said. “And then you look at the innings limits and the things that some of these guys have dealt with in the past -- as far as injury and trying to make sure that we're taking care of them -- and it's a really good problem to have.”
Unfortunately for the Pirates, the Cardinals were able to break it open with an RBI double by Thomas Saggese and a two-run homer by Jordan Walker off Yohan Ramírez in the seventh to salvage a split of the four-game series.
Tommy Pham gave the Pirates a 1-0 lead just two batters into the game with a Statcast-projected 440-foot home run over the left-field bullpen. Pham also drove in both Pirates runs in their 2-1 win on Wednesday night.
Even with the loss, the Pirates head to Boston for a weekend series as winners of six of their last eight games.
“Just like the fight, like the way that we're competing right now,” Kelly said. “Offensively, some really good things throughout the series. Today, leaving guys on third early in the game, we’ve got to find a way to get those guys in and produce some runs. But I think that we did a great job throughout the series with our commitment to the plan and the approach, and overall, it was a good series.”