Braxton Ashcraft spent Monday night in San Diego pitching like a guy who was about to leave with a gem. Instead, one overlooked detail turned a clean sixth inning into a mess, and a seemingly finished frame into one of baseball’s most irritating rulebook moments.
Ashcraft had the Pittsburgh Pirates in control with a 2-0 lead through five innings at Petco Park. Then Freddy Fermín led off the sixth with a double, moved to third on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s groundout, and with two outs Ashcraft looked ready to get out of it on one pitch when Jake Cronenworth rolled a grounder to second.
The inning didn’t end there.
Home plate umpire Dan Merzel called a balk, Fermín was sent home, and Pittsburgh’s lead shrank to 2-1. The groundout vanished because the ball was dead, and the call came under Rule 5.07(a)(2) of MLB’s official rulebook - the so-called “David Price rule.” It says that if a pitcher’s feet show the set position, he’s presumed to be pitching from the set unless he tells the umpire before the at-bat that he plans to use the windup.
That distinction matters because the set requires a complete stop, while the windup does not. If the pitcher doesn’t make the declaration, a windup-like motion from the set is a balk. And the declaration has to be made for every hitter.
Ashcraft had told the umpires he planned to use the windup against Tatis, but he didn’t repeat it for Cronenworth.
That tiny miss changed everything. If the groundout had counted, Ashcraft would have finished six scoreless innings on 76 pitches.
Instead, Fermín scored, Cronenworth came back up, worked seven pitches before singling, and then Manny Machado needed eight more pitches before Ashcraft finally got the inning-ending groundout. What should have been a one-pitch escape turned into a 16-pitch grind.
By the time it was over, Ashcraft was at 91 pitches and his night was basically done. He ended with six innings, four hits, one walk and one run allowed - still a strong line, but not the one it looked like he was building toward.
Afterward, Ashcraft didn’t argue that the rule had been applied incorrectly. He argued with the rule itself.
“I think it’s the dumbest rule in baseball, but it is a rule,” Ashcraft told Colin Beazley of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after the game. “It’s one of those obscure things that, it’s easy to slip your mind. Especially in a situation, big moment in the game.”
The Pirates eventually survived anyway, winning 3-2 in 12 innings. That kept the balk from becoming the headline of a loss, but it still loomed over what had been a dominant start that suddenly took a bizarre turn.
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