Aaron Ashby Is Gunning for Baseball’s Most Elusive Wins Mark

Aaron Ashby is doing his best to make pitcher wins cool again.

The statistic has largely become obsolete in today’s game, as fans place far less emphasis on pitcher wins than they once did. With so many external factors influencing who earns a decision, the value of a win has diminished over time.

They’re still fun to follow when history is on the line — like watching veterans Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer climb the all-time wins leaderboard — but in a single season, a pitcher’s win total is generally glossed over.

Unless, of course, a pitcher is chasing history.

Milwaukee Brewers reliever Aaron Ashby recorded his 10th win on Tuesday night, becoming the first pitcher in MLB to reach the 10-win mark this season. Per OptaSTATS, it marks just the second time in MLB history that the first pitcher to reach 10 wins did so with all 10 victories coming in relief.

The only other instance came in 1959, when Roy Face accomplished the feat for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Face also set the single-season record for wins by a reliever that year with 18 — a mark that has stood for 67 years.

Since 2016, only five relievers have won more than 10 games in a season: Ryan Yarbrough (14 in 2018), Adrian Morejon (13 in 2025), Brent Suter (12 in 2021), Colin Poche (12 in 2023), and John Gant (11 in 2019).

Ashby is already more than halfway to Face’s record, and the Brewers still have 92 games remaining. At this current pace, he’d finish with 23 wins, shattering the all-time single-season record for a reliever and cementing his place in baseball history.

How Is This Even Possible?

Of course, a lot has to go right for a relief pitcher to rack up wins.

Opportunity is a huge factor, and that’s especially true for relievers. More often than not, earning a win is simply a matter of circumstances.

Whether it’s intentional or not, the way skipper Pat Murphy has deployed Ashby this season has played a significant role in putting him in this position.

While Milwaukee’s bullpen has battled through injuries throughout the year, Ashby has become Murphy’s go-to option in leverage situations in the middle innings. Whether he is coming into a tight situation late in the game or coming into long relief after a short outing from the starter, Ashby is often the first name called out of the bullpen.

Early in the season, while the Brewers were still searching for consistency in their rotation, Ashby frequently entered games before the starter completed five innings, making the starter ineligible for the win. Several of Ashby’s victories came in those situations.

More often, however, Ashby enters during the middle or late innings of a tie game, throws a scoreless outing, and watches the Brewers’ offense take the lead behind him.

Not all pitcher wins are created equally, and even Murphy acknowledged that after Ashby notched his 10th win on Tuesday.

“That’s a vulture win for Ashby,” Murphy said. “He’s got nine good ones, but that was a vulture.”

This comment came after Ashby entered the game in the seventh inning with the Brewers leading 1-0. The southpaw allowed an RBI single to Gabriel Arias that tied the game at one apiece heading into the bottom of the seventh.

Then, Garrett Mitchell led off the bottom of the inning with a go-ahead solo home run. That swing proved to be the difference, as it put Ashby in line for the win and helped send the Brewers to victory.

Vulture win or not, it goes down as a win in the scorebook — and it moved Ashby one step closer to history.

Opportunity alone doesn’t explain Ashby’s success. He’s also earned Murhpy’s trust by consistently delivering.

Ashby has already made 31 relief appearances this season, four more than anyone else in Milwaukee’s bullpen. His 41.2 innings pitched also lead Brewers relievers by 12.1 innings and rank tied for sixth among all MLB relievers.

Ashby owns a 2.86 ERA on the year to go with a 2.85 FIP and 0.8 fWAR. While he allows more baserunners than most relievers with similar results, he excels in two crucial areas: generating strikeouts and inducing ground balls.

He is striking out a career-best 12.48 hitters per nine innings, the ninth-highest mark among qualified MLB relievers, while his 32.1% strikeout rate ranks in the top four percent of the league.

He’s also generating ground balls at a 55.2% clip — one of the best marks among relievers — and his five induced double plays rank among the top 10 in baseball.

Despite carrying a 1.36 WHIP, Ashby has consistently escaped trouble thanks to his swing-and-miss stuff and ability to keep the ball on the ground.

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Then, there’s the biggest factor of all: run support.

Ashby has recieved 38 runs of support in his relief appearances, easily the most of any reliever in baseball. The next closest is Houston Astros reliever AJ Blubaugh with 31.

When including Ashby’s lone start as an opener, that number climbs to 41 runs of support, which ranks 47th among the 476 MLB arms — starter or reliever — with at least 10 innings pitched.

A pitcher has virtually no control over how many runs his offense scores, which is what makes Ashby’s season so fascinating. Everything has aligned perfectly: opportunity, availability, performance, and timely offensive support.

There’s a reason why this record has stood for 67 years. The number of factors that have to align for a reliever to even approach 18 wins is remarkable. Yet through the first two and a half months of the 2026 season, that’s exactly what’s happening for Aaron Ashby.

It’s instances like this that make baseball such a beautiful sport. Whether you’re a Brewers fan or someone who believes pitcher wins have lost all analytical value, seasons like Ashby’s remind us that baseball is never short of surprises.

Sometimes, even the most outdated statistic in the sport can lead to one of the most entertaining stories.