Graham Ashcraft is making his own luck. The Cincinnati Reds will open their season on March 26 against the Boston Red Sox. In the 49 days until then, the city will gain 121 minutes of sunlight and a spring training's worth of hype. Hope springs eternal in the weeks before Opening Day. Our favorite teams haven't hit their first losing streak; our top prospects haven't been left off the 26-man roster. Excitement is in the air, and as the weather becomes more merciful, optimism will blossom with the magnolias.
This is clear online, where every February, a handful of players become the protagonists of late-winter baseball. It's the time of year when Mitch Keller becomes an ace, when Edward Cabrera puts it all together, and when Jack Leiter makes good on his draft capital.
Reds right-hander Graham Ashcraft has spent years in that spotlight. Armed with a cutter and sinker that flirted with triple digits, he was a Pitching Ninja stalwart en route to a 4.89 rookie-season ERA. In 2023, he debuted a new slider, which Jake Crumpler wrote about that April, when Ashcraft had allowed just one home run and owned a 2.10 ERA. Five months and 22 taters later, he faded into an afterthought. We gave him one last chance in 2024, but when his 15 starts ended with an ERA over 5.00, we moved on to shinier toys and flashier fastballs.
Ashcraft was relegated last season. He spent the year in the bullpen, away from fantasy rosters and the starting pitching probables that catch your attention on MLB.TV. He took the hill 62 times, earned a 3.99 ERA, and helped pitch Cincinnati into the postseason. From afar, Ashcraft's season was pedestrian, leaving us online pitching enthusiasts holding out hope for the long-awaited breakout.
I don't think it's coming. I think we missed it.
What Changed for Ashcraft in 2025?
The Reds unlocked Ashcraft's arsenal by shrinking it. Moving to the bullpen meant he wouldn't have to set batters up for future plate appearances. He just needed to execute, and he showed little interest in doing so with a suboptimal offering. Ashcraft ditched his sinker and changeup entirely in 2025, opening up 20% of his pitches for the cutter and slider that headline his repertoire. His slider is his best pitch, and its usage jumped from 32% to 46% in relief.
Throwing in one-inning bursts also improved his two pitches. Unsurprisingly, throwing at max effort increased his velocity, and tossing an 89.8-mph slider is going to get swings and misses. Aschraft's slider gained depth, his cutter gained glove-side movement, and both found more whiffs than the year prior.
MPH iVB iHB Stuff+ PLV
2024 Cutter 95.6 9.4 -1.1 98 5.01
2025 Cutter 97.1 9.2 -2.7 117 4.90
2024 Slider 88.4 -0.2 -10 124 5.21
2025 Slider 89.8 -4.0 -10.9 128 5.29
Likewise, the stuff metrics loved his new look. Gaining 1.5 ticks on his cutter propelled it from a 97 Stuff+ in 2024 to 118 in 2025. Only five cutters were better by Stuff+ among pitchers with at least 60 innings pitched. His slider, at 128 Stuff+, remained elite while generating a 97th-percentile chase rate.
The results immediately showed up in his strikeouts. Ashcraft struck out hitters at a 22.5% clip, an average mark but a vast improvement over his 16.3% rate in 2024. It was his first time surpassing 20%, limiting hitters' ability to string together hits. That only amplified Ashcraft's ability to suppress damage, which has long been his calling card when things are going well.
Ashcraft also demonstrated newfound command. He wouldn't be the first reliever to run hot for a season, but there's reason to believe that his improvement is sticky given the changes that precipitated it. Losing the sinker and changeup allowed him to focus on supination and glove-side movement. It's a more repeatable approach, and one that won't ask him to spot all over the zone.
Rather, Ashcraft threw an absurd 60.8% of his pitches to the glove-side part of the plate, a 99th-percentile mark that leaves the rest of his career in the dust. He's trying to get right-handed hitters to roll over pitches on the outside part of the plate and whiff outside the zone. Against lefties, he's hoping to induce soft contact the old-fashioned way, getting the ball up and in on their hands.
It worked to a tee in 2025, and while all that sideways spin meant an uptick in pitches over the middle third of the plate (22.8%, 90th-percentile), he threw even fewer pitches right down the middle, earning strikes in the upper and lower thirds of the strike zone. He mitigated the biggest mistakes, earned enough chases to keep his walks in check, and played into the strengths of his arsenal to limit damage.
Luck Is a Funny Thing
Fortune played an interesting role in Aschraft's season. A 3.99 ERA over 65.1 innings is remarkably fine. He earned 0.3 bWAR, 0.8 WARP, and 1.6 fWAR – a testament to FanGraphs' FIP-based estimation.
Between his 2.72 FIP, 3.29 xFIP, and 3.47 xERA, it's easy to paint Ashcraft's season as an unlucky one. His ERA isn't necessarily emblematic of his true talent, and a 13th-percentile LOB% rate (62.1%) didn't do him any favors, either. However, most projection systems aren't buying into the breakout, largely due to his 0.28 home-run-per-nine-innings ratio. That's one full home run away from his 2024 mark, and he's still giving up over one homer per nine innings for his career.
Regressing here could give back many of his gains, and in the Cincinnati jet stream, he may never be far from the long ball. For the average pitcher, a 96th-percentile home-run-per-nine-innings ratio and 94th-percentile home-run-to-fly-ball rate would be cause for concern. Ashcraft may have graduated out of that bucket. Pitchers aren't always in control of their batted-ball spray, but some can put their thumbs on the scale.
Ashcraft's home run luck wasn't an accident. Instead, it was the natural result of improvements in stuff and command. His elite velocity generated more whiffs, and his ability to live on the glove-side part of the plate earned him ugly swings outside the zone. Subsequently, his strikeout-plus-walk rate jumped from 24% to 31.3%. Fewer balls in play inherently minimizes batted-ball variance. And when hitters were making contact, they were hitting more ground balls.
Year GB% FB% xwOBA EV FB EV Barrel% ICR%
2024 49.4 20.6 .352 90.2 91.5 7.4 38.1
2025 57.5 14.4 .308 83.1 79.9 3.6 34.9
Subsequently, it's no surprise that Ashcraft limited pulled fly balls. Few pitchers were as stubborn in their refusal to do so. No reliever averaged less exit velocity (83.1 mph), and only two had lower exit velocities on flyballs. Ashcraft's upgraded stuff has raised his ceiling via the punch-out. Between the Ks, he forced hitters to settle, dictating the terms of engagement and winning more often than not.
There's a trade-off here, and it lies in his BABIP. At first glance, a .351 BABIP looks like bad luck. His .339 xBABIP suggests that isn't the case. Ashcraft is avoiding barrels at all costs, even if it means an uptick in walks and grounders. He is creating more traffic on the bases, dodging haymakers, and striking out enough guys to get away with it. While that's not a formula for outperforming one's peripherals, his efficiency created a career year.
Nothing about this feels particularly unsustainable. Ashcraft has arrived, albeit in a different form than we initially expected, and as he hopes to suppress damage in 2026, he has the perfect blueprint to follow.
