Pitchers and catchers are reporting, and baseball season is upon us once again. Looking over to Cincinnati Reds country, the team has had a busy offseason, bolstering their offense, while bringing back most of the pitching staff as they prepare for hopefully another successful season of carving up opposing hitters. One of the returning members is Graham Ashcraft, who will likely be making a transition to the bullpen, where new manager Terry Francona hopes the 26-year-old right-hander can excel.
Graham Ashcraft’s Transition to the Bullpen
Since debuting in 2022, Ashcraft’s lowest season ERA stands at an unimpressive 4.76, a mark he reached in 2023. 2024 was his worst season to date, as in 77 1/3 innings pitched in 15 starts, he had a 5.24 ERA and a 4.82 FIP, both alarming numbers for a 25-year-old who is not only not improving, but seemingly regressing. In three seasons in his career, Ashcraft has a 4.89 ERA, 4.76 ERA, and a 5.24 ERA respectively. On the bright side, a high 90s cutter with a wipeout breaking ball is certainly a recipe for success in the bullpen. However, Ashcraft’s underlying numbers may suggest otherwise.
Despite averaging 95.6 MPH on his cutter and an elite 91st percentile Breaking Ball Run Value, Ashcraft had an awful 16.3 K% in 2024, which places him in the third percentile league-wide. He doesn’t miss bats at all, with a lowly 22.1 Whiff% (22nd percentile) and 26.2 Chase% (22nd percentile). Ashcraft was also prone to loud contact, as his 42.7 Hard-Hit% (16th percentile) and 90.6 average exit velocity (7th percentile) are both among the bottom of MLB.
The only thing Ashcraft did well in 2024 was generating ground balls, as he had a 49.2 GB%, good for the 82nd percentile. This isn’t a one-off occurrence either, as Ashcraft has always hovered around the bottom of the barrel in all these categories throughout his young career.
Concerns and Silver Linings
Yet another possible concern is the dip in cutter velocity. In 2022, his average velocity on his cutter stood at a blazing 97.3 MPH. In 2023, it took a significant dip, as it went down to 95.8 MPH, and in 2024, it dipped south once again, this time by a small margin at 95.6 MPH. This dip in velocity likely wasn’t an intentional drop to bulk up his workload either, as he had a nearly identical innings-per-start average in all three years of his career. The positive outlook on this situation is that he would be able to go max effort out of the bullpen rather than preserving his arm to go deep in games. Hopes are Ashcraft can return to averaging 97 MPH while touching triple digits, as it would benefit his new bullpen role.
One last fun angle to predict Ashcraft’s likelihood of success out of the bullpen is looking at his performance in the first inning. In 15 first innings in 2024, Graham Ashcraft allowed just seven earned runs, giving him a stellar 2.14 ERA. While coming fresh into the game with a full pregame routine and coming into the later innings out of the bullpen is vastly different, it is a positive sign that Ashcraft dives right in and does not struggle out of the gate, which is an obvious need as a reliever.
With all that being said, it is still incredibly difficult to predict a starter’s transition to the bullpen. If all goes well, the Reds could have a solid late-inning reliever in Ashcraft, but if it doesn’t, he is still only 26 years old with lots of time to adjust and improve.
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