Hey guys. Welcome to Double Shot of Pirates. I'm Dan Kovachvich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

This program is brought to you by the North Shore Tavern, home of Steak on a Stone.

An absolute must stop, whether you're from around here or you're not around here.

The pirates are taking on the Cubs tonight.

Oh, those sinking, cubs, those dying on the vine, so to speak, referring to the outfield, of course,

Cubs who have now lost nine, count them, nine in a row.

I don't care about them, but what a weird season that is.

You have two 10-game winning streaks and a nine-game losing streak before May is over.

They're streaky and then there's that.

Well, tonight they're taking on the lefty Jordan Wicks and actually who they're really taken on is Braxton Ashcraft.

Ashcraft is who we're going to spend some time on today.

This appears to be a, I don't want to go too far.

He's in his mid-20s.

He's having a terrific start to his season.

He had a terrific debut last season.

So if you put them all together, he's just been terrific period since he's come up.

A couple of fun stats for you.

But if you go back to his debut last year, you'll see that he's,

he's seven and six. He's got pitching records don't matter at all anymore. He's been in 36

games. Half of those have been starts. He has a 2.8 ERA and a 1.14 whip.

This is real stuff, you guys.

This isn't someone who's just kind of, you know,

...