Aaron Ashby Pulls a Trigger, Dodges a Bullet, and Will Stay a Starter (For Now) Because the Brewers Need Him to Be

Initially, the indication was that Aaron Ashby had suffered a Grade 2 oblique strain. That would have been very bad news for the southpaw, who would probably have been barred from throwing for six to eight weeks in that scenario. The images "weren't super clear," though, Ashby said Friday, and upon a second look, the diagnosis was downgraded to a Grade 1 strain.

"Yeah, they came back together and said it wasn’t as bad as they originally thought, which is good news," Ashby said. "I had kind of felt that way from the get-go. I felt like I had pulled the trigger early enough on coming out of the game. I just never felt like it was all that bad, talking to other guys who have had Grade 2s said that they couldn’t move the next day, they couldn’t get out of the car by themselves, they couldn’t get off the plane. I was like, ‘I feel like I could maybe throw a baseball right now.’ So all things considered, I think we’re in a great spot."

Ashby's throwing will be paused for two weeks to let healing take place, and the timeline after that is difficult to predict. Even more than with other injuries, the progress of recovery and return to play depends on what the body tolerates.

"It’s hard to put timelines on it, because you have to progress with obliques in a way that there’s no discomfort," he said. "Hopefully, we get to two weeks of a rehab thing and we can start some sort of throwing progression. I’m not really sure what that looks like—med balls, weighted balls, whatever that may look like. But some sort of something to begin this buildup again."

When that happens, the team and the pitcher share the goal that he resumes stretching out to start. That could have been somewhat in question, after the team signed Jose Quintana this week to round out their projected starting rotation for Opening Day, but Ashby is committed to it, and he said Friday that the team shares that vision.

For the Brewers, a part of that is thinking beyond the five (or six) pitchers they plan to have starting games when the season begins, which will include Freddy Peralta, Tobias Myers, Nestor Cortes, Quintana, and Aaron Civale. They should get Brandon Woodruff back sometime fairly early in the season (Woodruff said Friday that he hopes to get into a big-league Cactus League game before camp wraps up, though that would not mean he was ready to be on the roster immediately for the regular season), and they have depth in the minor leagues, but they'll need more than the six veterans—and even more than the extra help of young arms like Logan Henderson or Chad Patrick.

"It’s not only for situations like what just happened with Ashby," manager Pat Murphy said Wednesday, in the wake of the Quintana signing. "We know that’s inevitable; guys are going to be hurt. It’s more just for continuing to make sure that all the wheels on our bus are at least functioning."

Amassing depth (and keeping players with the ability to start prepared to do so) will be important for this year, to be sure, but Murphy also put it in a broader, longer-term context Friday,

"It does factor in," Murphy said, when asked whether Ashby's injury history posed a temptation to move him back to the relief role where he found success last year, "but when you look down the road a little bit, it would be really important that he stays a starter. From an organizational standpoint, to produce starters that have that kind of stuff."

Without saying it out loud, what Murphy is talking about is the fact that Freddy Peralta has just one more club option left on his team-friendly deal, after this year. The way the Brewers do things with most star-caliber veterans, they would trade him next winter, getting back players who help them compete in perpetuity. (Notably, they didn't do so with Willy Adames last offseason, because of what a special presence Adames was both on and off the field, and Peralta is the same kind of person and player. Still, the question looms.) Meanwhile, Civale, Quintana, Cortes, and Woodruff are all slated to hit free agency after 2025, even if a couple of them technically have mutual options that will need to be declined by one side or the other to make that official.

It's possible that the team ends up re-signing or extending one of those established pitchers, but as of this moment, there is a yawning gap where any controllable, semi-established starting pitching core should be for this team. Myers is the only player who fits that description. Ashby can still be another.

The team is optimistic about the future for Jacob Misiorowski, Logan Henderson, Chad Patrick, and others, but right now, they're staring down the barrel of a potential pitching shortfall beginning next season. They need to keep hurlers who have shown plus stuff in starting roles starter-capable, so Ashby will certainly continue to prepare as a starter—"unless you get to a spot that he's absolutely needed in the bullpen," Murphy put it.

In that sense, the fact that this injury is less severe than it first appeared is a lifesaver. As Ashby noted, a long shutdown would have made it tough for him to build back up as a starter this year—not because he couldn't have gotten stretched out before the end of the season, but because his arm might have been needed to reinforce the bullpen sooner than that, and anyway, it becomes a different conversation if the player and team have to decide whether to stretch out as a starter if that process begins in May. It can still begin in March, as things stand, so Ashby doesn't have to worry about changing roles yet. The Brewers, who are already worrying beyond the bounds of this season (without compromising their focus on it), have dodged a different bullet, by still having a chance to get him a good developmental season of starting before needing to depend on him more heavily in the future.