Bowden Francis Allows a Lot of Baserunners. Why Don’t Any of Them Steal?

As Jays Centre's Bob Ritchie noted in a recent article, no one has managed to steal a base with Bowden Francis on the mound this season. Opponents have had 327 opportunities (according to Statcast), and no one has even tried to steal a base. For comparison, players have attempted to steal on 1.7% of 288 total opportunities with Kevin Gausman on the mound. Paul Skenes and Michael Wacha are the only pitchers whose opponents have had more opportunities and who also have allowed zero attempts this season. This isn’t an aberration, as since 2022, when Francis first came up, runners have only attempted steals on 0.2% of opportunities against him. Francis is a right-handed pitcher, so it's not as if he is tapping into the lefty advantage. 

One hypothesis (noted by Bob) is that, given the volume of home runs Francis is giving up this year, there isn’t much reason for runners to risk an out on the basepaths. But this has been consistent year-to-year, regardless of his home run percentage. There must be something Francis is doing that is limiting the running game. We can plausibly eliminate catching defense because we are not seeing the same effect for other Blue Jays’ pitchers. We can classify the remaining possibilities into several categories:

Disengagements/Pickoffs
Perhaps Francis has elite pickoff skills and is using some wily moves to hold runners on.

This one is fairly easy to dismiss. Francis has thrown over 41 times this year and doesn’t seem to have ever used a second disengagement on a baserunner. He also hasn’t picked anyone off.

However, his average distance at pitch, which measures a runner’s leadoff, ranks 57th among all qualified pitchers. At 14.9 feet, it’s bunched in with a lot of pitchers around 15 feet. The amount of distance runners have gained against him on their secondary leads (after he begins his delivery) is better than average. This could mean that runners are not reading his delivery well and therefore acting cautiously. Being deceptive in his delivery is definitely a likely explanation. 

Pitch Selection
Francis’ pitch selection might discourage players from trying to run on him.

Francis primarily throws three pitches, a four-seamer (57.7% of the time), a split finger (22.7%) and a curveball (14.0%). Michael King is another starter who has yet to allow a steal in a similar number of opportunities. Like Francis, he throws fastballs (four-seamers and sinkers) about 58% of the time. Perhaps heavy fastball usage suppresses the running game?

However, if this is the case, it's not how Wacha (31% four-seamers, 11% sinkers) and Skenes (35% four-seamers, 8.4% sinkers) are suppressing stolen base attempts. So, there isn’t necessarily strong evidence that pitch type is a difference maker.

Tempo
Is Francis preventing steals by getting the ball to home plate faster than most pitchers?

Statcast tracks how quickly pitchers deliver the ball to home with runners on base. The assumption is that getting the ball home faster can help prevent steals. Francis is, again, about average according to this metric and a full second slower than both Wacha and Skenes. He is a half-second faster than King. He also has a very low percentage of fast and slow deliveries this year, which implies he is consistent in the time he takes to receive the ball and throw a pitch. There really is nothing remarkable here, as he isn’t varying his tempo to throw off runners. 

Pitch Location
Maybe it is less about speed and more about location. 

I am grateful to Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs for this analysis of the impact of pitch velocity and location on stolen base rates. One thing he found is that higher pitches tend to decrease SB%. Francis throws a lot of fastballs, and they tend to be around the strike zone or higher. The caveat is that his split finger tends to be down, and at 22%, would create some opportunities to run. While this may have a small impact, it's probably not insignificant. 

Opponents
Has Francis pitched against opponents that are less likely to steal?

Francis has pitched against 13 different teams this year. Unfortunately, some are near the top of the stolen base leaderboard, so this is not an obvious answer. 

Putting all this data together, only leadoff distance stands out as a good explanation for why Francis is limiting stolen bases. Given his relative lack of success this year, particularly in preventing home runs, it probably also makes sense that teams just aren’t risking running into an out. In this case, Francis is likely benefiting from his above-average leadoff suppression skills, his high home run rate, and the effect of the small sample. Someday, some player will try to swipe a bag against Francis, as long as he isn’t sent down to Buffalo first.