Konnor Griffin made one mistake, and Braxton Ashcraft made sure it did not become the only thing anyone remembered about April 16 at PNC Park. After the 19-year-old missed the second base bag on a ground ball in the top of the fifth inning, allowing all three runs to score in the Pirates’ 8-7 extra-inning loss to the Washington Nationals, Ashcraft went straight to him with a message that was blunt and immediate.
“Hey man, I’m sorry,” Griffin told Ashcraft after the play, and Ashcraft’s response was even clearer: “Never apologize to me for the plays you make. Nobody questions the effort you put in, nobody questions the process that you have throughout your work.”
The mistake came with the bases loaded and one out. Griffin fielded the ground ball, missed the bag at second and then threw the ball and spiked it as Nasim Nuñez slid into the base and collided with him. The result was costly. All three runs came across, and Pittsburgh ended up losing 8-7 in extra innings.
That mattered because Griffin is not just another young player learning on the fly. Ashcraft said the shortstop also hit a triple in his next at-bat, or the second at-bat after the mistake, and noted that he won an MiLB Gold Glove Award last season. Griffin is viewed as one of the best future talents in baseball, which is exactly why one bad inning can draw so much attention. Ashcraft, meanwhile, is in his first full season as a starting pitcher after making the major leagues at 25 years old in 2025, and he sounded more interested in protecting a teammate than revisiting the error.
That is the part that stands out. The play was real, the damage was real and the loss was real, but so was the response from a veteran voice in the clubhouse. For Griffin, the next test is not whether he can avoid ever making another mistake. It is whether he can keep playing like the defender and hitter Pittsburgh believes he can be, with teammates like Ashcraft making sure one miscue does not become a label.
