The Brewers' Playoff Bullpen Just Might Need to Accommodate an Unexpected Power Arm

It really didn't look, even quite recently, like Aaron Ashby was going to make it back from the injury that derailed his career last season. His ERA with Triple-A Nashville this season is 8.04, in 84 innings. He was optimistic back in the spring, but the outlook got bleak in a hurry. His command was absent, and his stuff wasn't lively enough to even approximate making up for it.

Ashby returned to the big leagues a week ago, though, and in just two appearances with the big-league team, he's changed the tone of the conversation about his future--and about the makeup of the team's bullpen, come the postseason. In four total innings against the two Bay Area teams, Ashby has not allowed a run or a hit, has walked just one, and has fanned five batters.

The Giants and the Athletics are both lousy teams, and the mere fact that he made multi-inning, scoreless relief outings against each doesn't move the needle. Here's what does.

Early this season, Ashby's sinker sat at an average velocity around 93 miles per hour. After a steady climb, he's now throwing 96. In Thursday's contest, he threw Mark Canha a front-door sinker at 98.9 MPH.

Along with that extra juice on the fastball, Ashby has found something with his changeup. The best ones he threw against the Giants Thursday were filthy in a way that made plenty of drowsy mid-afternoon baseball watchers sit up, wide-eyed.

The extra armside run and a notable amount of added vertical depth are important, but don't lose sight of the velocity, either. With his fastball now in the upper 90s, he's throwing that changeup at 89-91, too. Movement like that on a pitch thrown as hard as Ashby is throwing it is not normal. It's the kind of pitch that forces a reconsideration of a pitcher's entire value profile.

Ashby also has a slider and a curveball, of course, but the story here seems to be his combination of a fastball creeping toward triple digits and a changeup that now has upside beyond that of most pitchers. Throwing strikes remains the biggest focus, but he's created considerably more margin for error for himself, and the small sample of results he's yielded since coming back to the majors suggests that he can avoid walking too many hitters to be viable.

At this point, Ashby is a legitimate candidate to work his way into the Crew's bullpen picture for the postseason. He has a month to further burnish his case, and the raw stuff to create a difficult decision for Matt Arnold, Pat Murphy, and others. If good health holds, the Brewers will have more talented pitchers than they can possibly roster, but Ashby can't be ruled out. The stuff he's thrown at opposing batters in these two outings is too good to ignore, even if the results were less sparkling than they have been.