PIRATES

In assessing his own pitching performance in its entirety, Braxton Ashcraft said he thinks he threw the ball well in his 5 2/3 innings here today against the Nationals. 

Ashcraft, who entered this game having allowed just four runs over 17 innings in three starts, saw five runs (two earned) come across to score and he struck out seven to give him a third straight start with seven or more strikeouts. He also reached the 90-pitch plateau for the first time in the big leagues. His big concern, however, was the walks. There were only two of them, but both came at less than ideal moments. One came with two outs in the fourth inning and the other loaded the bases in a fifth inning that spiraled due to mistakes in the field. Ashcraft also hit a batter in that fifth. 

"Those always come back to bite you, especially with no outs," Ashcraft said. "There’s a lot of baseball that happened today. There’s plays that are made 99 out of 100 times and then on the backend of that you have guys going out and baseball happened again, where they make those plays 99 out of 100 times and they go back and contribute to the team immediately afterwards. In its entirety, holistically, I feel like it was a fine outing. Walks have to be eliminated. Free passes in general just have to be eliminated."