Trending
By Jarrod Prugar
For the Mirror
The Altoona Curve losing streak stretched to seven games with a 6-2 loss to the Akron RubberDucks in front of 3,809 fans at PNG Field Friday night.
It marked their 11th loss in 12 games, and for Curve manager Robby Hammock, the early part of this season and this series against Akron has certainly been a grind.
"We're working through it each day and it's a crawl before you can walk type thing right now," Hammock said.
One of the positive takeaways in the 13th loss was the performance of starting pitcher Braxton Ashcraft.
Ashcraft took the loss after giving up four runs over five innings of work, though, it's the number five that's important for Ashcraft. Friday's five-inning outing was the first time he went five innings since May 20, 2021 when he was pitching for the High-A Greensboro Grasshoppers.
"Ashcraft's got big stuff. He flashes great stuff," Curve manager Robby Hammock said.
"The thing he's working on is trying to throw more quality strikes. He just still has a tendency to lead pitches in and over the zone and in poor spots and he's just trying to work through it slowly but surely."
Those misses led to Ashcraft giving up four of his six hits for extra bases with two being doubles and the others being a triple and home run.
Along with the extended outing as a positive, Ashcraft's pitch mix worked well as he walked one and struck out five.
For him though, it's about sticking to the plan and working through a mixed bag of results on the stat sheet.
"The biggest thing about this part of this year is establishing a workload that I can manage and manage velocity through an outing and maintain stuff and still continue to get outs," Ashcraft said. "Obviously, that's been a little bit of a challenge this year, but it's not for lack of stuff or anything like that."
Ashcraft was sidelined for the entire 2022 season due to Tommy John surgery and was limited in 2023 as he recovered. Not being able to go full throttle as an athlete can pose a certain set of challenges on the road to recovery which is something not lost on Ashcraft.
"It's just controlling the controllables, knowing the organization has a plan for how they want things to play out and how they want to build me up and establish that body of work," Ashcraft said. "It's not really for me to question or decide on, it's just go out there and execute whenever you're called on. That's where the focus lies for me right now and just figuring out the things that I can improve on and get better at the things that I've been doing well thank you."
For the second game in a row, the Curve offense didn't record a hit until the fifth inning when Jase Bowen broke up the no-hitter with a single that plated Jackson Glenn for the first Altoona run.
"We're just trying to get to the heater," Hammock said. "Trying to get another fastball. I thought today the at bats were a little better."
Streak
Curve shortstop Tsung-Che Cheng has reached base in all four games of the series against Akron so far. He singled in the sixth inning and walked to keep his series streak alive on Friday.
A solid two
Chris Gau came in for Cameron Junker who worked the sixth and seventh inning for Altoona. He alloweded only a single base runner, and it was his second straight outing where he did not yield an earned run. His ERA now sits at 2.53 on the season.
Next up
Altoona sends right handed pitcher Po-Yu Chen to the mound for Saturday's contest against Akron. Chen allowed three runs in 2-plus innings of work in his outing against Bowie last week.
It will be southpaw Anthony Solometo who gets the nod for Sunday's game. Solometo went 2-plus innings and gave up two runs on two hits as well as three walks and three strikeouts against the Baysox.