BRADENTON, Fla. — Bryson Stott’s sharp grounder hit the lip between the grass and infield dirt, skipping over the glove of Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman Jack Brannigan to hit him square in the nose.
It happened so fast that Brannigan was stunned. As his eyes began to water, a thought crossed his mind: How did I not catch that?
“I saw the ball, and my first instinct was to pick it up and throw it. When I saw (Stott) was safe, I was upset I didn’t make the play,” Brannigan said. “I looked down and saw some blood on my hand and was like, ‘Oh shoot, I have a bloody nose.’ Then I leaned over and it was pouring out — which was a very strange experience, to have that uncontrollable bleeding come out of your nose.”
That'll leave a mark.
— Rees Kennedy (@SavantStudy) February 22, 2026
Pirates 3B Jack Brannigan knocks down an infield hit... with his nose. pic.twitter.com/v65rAAREJ2
The bad hop that broke Brannigan’s nose in the second inning of a Feb. 22 game against the Philadelphia Phillies in Clearwater was his latest brush with bad luck. His 2025 season at Double-A Altoona ended after 59 games when he underwent right shoulder labral repair surgery. The 25-year-old spent the remainder of the summer recovering from the injury only to suffer another in his first game back before he could even get an at-bat.
“It’s really just frustration. It’s definitely tough to come to the realization that I didn’t even make it through my first game and something else popped up again,” Brannigan said. “You can’t help but ask yourself, ‘Why me? Why am I going through this?’”
Sporting dark bruises under bloodshot eyes, Brannigan wore a hooded shirt over his head while walking through the home clubhouse at LECOM Park in the days afterward. He underwent closed reduction surgery to straighten the bones on his nose Feb. 27 and is wearing a thermoplastic nasal splint for support. Now that Brannigan has missed two full weeks of spring training, it will require a buildup before he’s ready to return to game action.
“He’s going to miss a lot, especially coming off the shoulder injury and dealing with what he’s dealt with,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said. “Nobody knows how hard that is: To rehab, come back and have a setback like that on a freak play … it sucks.”
Brannigan found the most frustration was in dealing with breathing out of his mouth instead of his nostrils. He would wake up with the worst case of cotton mouth he’s ever experienced. Brannigan didn’t feel any pain, just annoyance and embarrassment. Other than an ankle sprain that caused him to miss two games in high school, he’d never been injured. Now he has been sidelined twice in a seven-month span.
A top-10 prospect entering the 2025 season, the 6-foot, 200-pound Brannigan is considered a plus-defender with an elite arm who is athletic enough to play shortstop or third base. Kelly believes that the Pirates had three of the top five defensive third basemen in baseball last year, with Gold Glove winners in Ke’Bryan Hayes and Jared Triolo and Brannigan in the minors. That only makes the hop harder for Brannigan to swallow.
“That’s what I felt the embarrassment of: How did I miss it?” Brannigan said. “Now I have to deal with this facial wound and all of the swelling because I couldn’t get a glove on it. That’s just the way the game goes. You’re going to get hops. That’s a big thing for me: Even though it was a bad hop, I still knocked it down, kept it in the infield and had an opportunity to get an out at first.”
It impressed his Pirates teammates, too. Shortstop Konnor Griffin was playing next to Brannigan when he took the bad hop and called it a “pretty nasty sight” to see the blood pouring from his nose.
“The cool thing is, he did try to finish the play and almost got the guy out,” Griffin said. “He’s just a warrior. It took a bad hop on him. It shows his toughness, trying to finish the play.”
Pirates pitcher Braxton Ashcraft, who was on the mound, didn’t see the bad hop hit Brannigan flush in the face but heard it and thought that the ball had bounced out of his glove. When Ashcraft saw blood, he turned away. He had to keep his mind on the game, not the “gory” sight.
“I don’t think anybody’s ever questioned Jack’s ability to ‘finish the play,’” Ashcraft said. “In this game, we all go through things that take you off the field at inopportune times. Just the way he’s gone about his work through his rehab, the attitude that he’s had through that, I think that stuff doesn’t come out of nowhere. That’s ingrained in who you are. … That’s a pretty selfless move, to wear one off the face and finish the play.”
When Brannigan saw blood pouring out of his nose like it was a faucet, he didn’t think about any of those things. He squatted to prevent the blood from getting all over his Pirates uniform. The athletic trainers immediately told Brannigan his nose was broken, then took him to a hospital in St. Petersburg for a CT scan. The damage was exclusive to the nose, which he took as a positive because it could have been worse.
Brannigan expects to have the cast removed Monday, then will begin his buildup back to playing baseball. Kelly anticipates that it will take some time for Brannigan to overcome his latest travail.
“He’s so good that he’ll jump back on the horse when the time is right,” Kelly said. “Anytime a guy rehabs like that, going through a long rehab all offseason and for that to happen in the first game is unfortunate. He’s a tough kid. He’s going to be all right. It’s just a tough road to go through right now.”
The season-ending shoulder surgery tested his resolve. A natural righty, Brannigan had to learn to do everything left-handed, from showering (“a disaster”) to brushing his teeth. The worst part was watching from afar while rehabilitating in Florida as his Curve teammates finished their season by making the Eastern League Southwest Division playoffs without him.
What helped was the news Brannigan received in November, when the Pirates added him to their 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft. His stock has slipped, dropping to No. 24 in MLB Pipeline’s top 30 prospect rankings, so this is a vital season in his development. Brannigan hopes this setback is the start of a comeback that ends with him making his major league debut with the Pirates.
“There were definitely nights in the fall where you’re sitting there watching and you think, ‘I know I can get through this and make it to the majors.’ It made me tougher, made me more into who I am now,” Brannigan said. “I feel like the nasal injury is just doing the same thing for me. I know I can do this. I have to continue to fight through the punches and keep battling and, hopefully, make it up there.”
