Graham Ashcraft

Ashcraft showed up to last spring training with a new slider and proceeded to post a 25:2 K:BB over 17.1 Cactus League innings. However, while he held a 2.00 ERA over his first six starts of the regular season, a 27:16 K:BB in 36 frames pointed to looming trouble and, sure enough, the wheels came off to the tune of a 12.82 ERA in his next eight outings. Ashcraft was better the rest of the way before needing toe surgery in September, but he never upped the strikeouts to an acceptable level. At this point, we probably can't count on that ever being part of his skill set, although it can't be totally ruled out for a guy who is one of the hardest-throwing starters in baseball. Ashcraft is expected to be physically ready for Opening Day and should remain a great source for groundballs and weak contact, but unless he can start missing more bats he'll always be walking a tightrope at Great American Ball Park.

Ashcraft's name sounds like it belongs more to a financial advisor than it does a major league pitcher, but financial advisors don't throw upper 90's fastballs like he does. Ashcraft has a reliever-like repertoire of sinker/slider/cutter that is far from a finished product. The slider was his primary putaway pitch generating swings and misses one-third of the time, but the league had little trouble with the cutters and sinkers as the two pitches had identical velocity and not much difference in their shape toward home. Ashcraft has a changeup, in theory, as he threw it 12 times in total last season, and yet did better against lefties (.232 average) than righties (.323 average.) It really is unusual to see a righty with his type of repertoire struggle so badly against righties as they also hit 10 of the 11 homers he allowed. It is tough to recommend such an incomplete product like Ashcraft no matter how hard he throws as he could quickly find himself out of the rotation if 2023 picks up where 2022 left off.