The Brewers needed Aaron Ashby. And Aaron Ashby needed that outing.
· Yahoo Sports
SAN DIEGO – There is no official MVP award given out in the divisional round of the MLB playoffs, but if there was, it almost certainly would have gone to Jackson Chourio for the Brewers.
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After that, though, there’s a strong case that Aaron Ashby was the Brewers’ second-most valuable player.
Ashby exorcised some playoff demons of years past with three dominant high-leverage outings.
In Game 1, he recorded five scoreless, hitless, walkless outs between the fifth and seventh innings. In Game 2, he tossed a scoreless eighth, working around some shaky defense.
Then came his October opus: Three innings, no hits, no runs, three strikeouts to bridge the gap from Robert Gasser to Abner Uribe in the Game 4 clincher at Petco Park on Oct. 8.
Ashby was dialed from the jump.
In the bullpen, he felt his changeup was coming out well. That’s not always a sign of what’s to come, but on this night against the righty-heavy San Diego Padres lineup, it was.
Ashby spun the changeup 13 times out of his 38 total pitches for a 34% usage that was his second-highest of any game this year.
“I just faced more righties than I normally do,” he said. “That’s kind of my pitch for righties.”
For Ashby, it just happened that way. A called strike with a changeup on his very first pitch of the outing to Samad Taylor placed the thought in catcher William Contreras’ head that it might be a go-to pitch the rest of the way, and it wound up producing four whiffs on five swings.
“There’s the game plan, right?” Ashby said. “And then there’s what Bill and I are feeling in the moment. I like to almost – not be surprised – but I want to throw this and then he calls it and there’s that moment of yeah we’re on the same page right now. There’s volition there. The changeup was really good tonight. There’s something he feels works, I feel works and we get to the same conclusion on our way, which is cool. Then we attack from there.”
Two at-bats in particular showed how locked in Ashby was.
The first was against Austin Hays in the sixth. A walk to Ty France brought up Hays, who hit .380 with a .956 OPS against left-handed pitching this year.
Contreras trusted the changeup to start the at-bat, figuring Hays may be jumping at a fastball following a free pass. He was right, and Hays swung over the top.
The next pitch was a spiked changeup, but Contreras pushed the same button again. Another whiff.
Rather than try and triple-up or throw a fastball when Hays had taken two fastball hacks, Contreras called for a curveball. It got in on Hays’ hands for a light tapper back to the mound that started an inning-ending double play.
“I honestly don’t know,” Ashby said when asked about spamming Hays with changeups. “You think he’s gonna swing. It looks like sinker, so maybe he’s sitting on sinker. I don’t read too much into what hitters are maybe sitting on; I just know what got them to swing or take on the previous pitch and what that allows me to throw on the next pitch.”
Ashby’s final at-bat of the outing was a good one, too.
Following a two-out walk to Miguel Andujar, Taylor took a good rip at a sinker and fouled it off to begin the battle. Ashby then spiked a changeup to even the count. Contreras sensed it was time for the curve again, and Taylor’s knees buckled, an indication he was looking for a fastball.
That was a cue to throw it again, and this time the hammer put Taylor away and Ashby walked off the mound having completed his longest outing of the year.
It was a case of a pitcher and catcher not only being on the same page with how a hitter was reacting, but also understanding the pitcher’s stuff and how they could steal a strikeout without too much worry.
“Honestly, the curveball, I’m always trying to throw it for a ball below the zone,” Ashby said. “I think when it gets in-zone it gets more so guys take it because they think it’s a ball. So there, I’m just trying to throw it hard and we can get him.”
This was a feel-good outing for Ashby in many ways. Not only did he help pitch his team into the National League Championship Series against the team his uncle, Andy, played many years for, but he also capped off a stellar series.
Ashby, in all, tossed 5 ⅔ scoreless innings, allowing two hits and two walks while punching out five. He added half of a win according to the metric win probability added – the most on the pitching staff and second on the team total to Chourio’s 0.6
In the playoffs in his career before facing the Padres, Ashby had struggled mightily, allowing an almost-infathomable 28 baserunners (16 hits, 10 walks, two hit batters) in only 9 ⅓ innings.
On a clinching evening in San Diego, Ashby looked nothing like the pitcher who struggled against the Mets in 2024 or put the Brewers in early holes as an opener last year.
The most reliable reliever on the team in terms of workload looked like the best reliever on the team
“It’s always easy to feel good in these scenarios,” Ashby said. “Crowd’s into it. Game’s on the line. I love it.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Brewers needed Aaron Ashby. And Aaron Ashby needed that outing.