Brewers Lock In Another Piece Of Their Future With Aaron Ashby Extension

After the excitement of proposing wears off, it’s only natural for a young couple to start worrying about how they’ll ultimately pay for the forthcoming nuptuials.

Aaron Ashby and his bride-to-be won’t have to worry about that.

Days after Ashby popped the question to his longtime girlfriend Avery, the left-handed pitcher made another major life decision when he agreed to terms with the Milwaukee Brewers on a five-year contract extension reportedly worth $20.5 million.

“It’s been a big week,” Ashby said after news of the extension became official last Friday. “I’m just extremely excited.”

As he should be.

The former fourth-round pick is the latest pitching prospect to matriculate under the Brewers’ developmental program which in recent years has produced talents like Corbin Burnes, Josh Hader and Devin Williams who account for the last four National League Reliever of the Year Awards, the 2020 NL Rookie of the Year Award and last year’s NL Cy Young Award.

Manager Craig Counsell thinks Ashby has both the stuff and the mental makeup to join that list someday.

“Aaron is the type of person and player that we think can be a Brewer for a long time,” Counsell said. “He’s very early in his big league career, but he’s a player that I think everybody thinks can have great success in this league and has the ability to grow both as a player and a person into a very good pitcher in this very good pitcher in this league and so happy that it kind of worked out for both sides and that he’s going to be a Brewer for a long time.”

Ashby climbed Milwaukee’s organizational ladder quickly since being selected out of Crowder Community College in southwest Missouri with the 125th overall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft.

His pro career started on an auspicious note, going 1-2 with a 6.20 ERA in six appearances (three starts) for the Brewers’ Rookie affiliate in Helena, Montana but posted a 2.17 ERA in seven starts after a promotion to Class A Wisconsin, where he struck out 47 batters over 37 1/3 innings of work.

Ashby followed that by going 5-10 with a 3.50 ERA in 24 appearances (23 starts) while spitting the 2019 season between Wisconsin and High-A Carolina, which landed him the Brewers’ Minor League Pitcher of the Year honors and put him fifth among the organization’s Top 30 prospects heading into 2020.

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut baseball down in Spring Training and wiped out the minor league season, Milwaukee opted to assign Ashby to its alternate training site to continue his development.

Ashby’s initial big-league experience didn’t quite go as planned. He didn’t even make it out of the first inning, giving up seven runs (four earned) while throwing 39 pitches but took no decision as the Brewers came back to score 15 unanswered runs to in one of the more memorable games in the history of the team’s rivalry with the Chicago Cubs.

“There’s only one way to handle it,” Counsell said after that game. “You’ve got to learn from it. What I told him is you try to put it out of your mind today, and then tomorrow unpack it a little bit and understand what happened, what you can do better. It’s a lesson of the big leagues and how little room for error there is. You don’t get mistakes. The league does not let you up from that stuff. That’s why this is the highest level. You’ve got to learn from it, and that’s what he has to do. He has to take it as a lesson and as a teacher and understand what it can do to you and why that makes you have to get a little bit better.”

Ashby heeded the advice. When he returned from Nashville a month later, he produced three straight scoreless outings and had lowered his ERA from 54.00 after his debut to 2.90 going into the regular-season finale against the Dodgers, when he gave up six runs over 2/3 of an inning to record the first blown save of his career.

By then, though, it was already clear that Ashby was in the Brewers long-term plans and the team made that clear to him earlier this season when they first approached him about the possibility of an extension.

“It’s something I’ve kind of prayed for,” Ashby said. “I think it’s cool when guys are able to spend a majority or even all of their career with one team. That’s really cool.”

Ashby is the second young pitcher locked in by the Brewers, joining right-hander Freddy Peralta who signed a five-year, $15 million extension just days before the pandemic shut down the industry in 2020.

Like Peralta, Ashby runs the risk of leaving money on the table down the road in exchange for immediate security but it’s a risk Ashby is more than willing to take — especially if he and the Brewers continue their winning ways.

If we had a fortune teller here, that would be great but we don’t. In this sport, you see every day how fragile it could be. I’d love to be able to say I’m going to be a superstar and I hope I am. I was telling some guys before that I hope I outperform the contract. You want to out perform every contract. For me, it was a decision I was comfortable with.

It’s a decision the Brewers are comfortable with, too.

“We’re very optimistic about what the future holds for him,” Stearns said. “Development paths are linear. There are bumps in the road. That won’t come as a shock to us, either, but we certainly believe in Aaron and believe he’s going to continue to do whatever he can to make himself as good as possible.”