Bowden Francis Isn’t Fooling Hitters Like He Did Before

Needless to say, this isn't a promising development. If you’ll remember, the beginning of 2024 was hardly a successful period for Francis. In his first 38.2 innings, he pitched to a 5.82 ERA and a 5.34 FIP.

Statcast expected wOBA (and by extension, xERA) takes into account a pitcher's quality of contact allowed, as well as his strikeout and walk data. Given everything I've just outlined about Francis’s 2025 performance, it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that his xwOBA has been steadily rising throughout the season:

During his start on April 18 against the Mariners – on the surface, a six-inning, one-run gem – Francis's 100-PA rolling xwOBA reached a new career high. It continued to climb in his latest start against the Astros last week.

One thing that xwOBA won't tell you is that Francis has given up a troubling amount of pulled contact on balls hit in the air. His pull rate on fly balls and line drives is up to 55.3% this year, compared to 42.6% last year (per FanGraphs). The league average rate is about 31%. This likely has something to do with the fact that batters are swinging at his pitches further out in front of the plate. According to Baseball Savant, his average incept point in 2024 was 4.9 inches in front of home. This year, that number is 7.5 inches.

On a related note, opposing hitters are swinging at fewer of Francis's pitches this season; his swing rate has decreased from 51.7% to 44.8%. Yet, when they do choose to swing, they are taking better hacks. His opponents have a higher fast swing rate and a higher squared-up rate so far in 2025. That combination has led to a large increase in what Baseball Savant calls "blast rate." Blasts, as you can imagine, are a particularly dangerous form of contact. All of this – from the increased pull rate to the increased blast rate – suggests that hitters are seeing Francis much better than they did last year.

A keen ability to fool his opponents was the driving force behind Francis’s success in 2024. Individually, none of his pitches were especially nasty. Yet, he was a perfect example of how a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. As Mario Delgado Genzor pointed out for Baseball Prospectus, a “basic visual evaluation” might miss the fact that Francis was superb at deceiving his opponents thanks to elite arsenal coherence and tunneling. Indeed, Francis ranked highly in both the Movement Spread and Velocity Spread metrics at BP, with Stephen Sutton-Brown noting that, “Francis excels by carefully tweaking his pitch mix against lefties and righties, featuring the splitter much more heavily to lefties and the slider more to righties. Each tunnels perfectly against his fastball while varying in total movement and velocity, keeping batters on their toes and helping him consistently outperform the quality of his stuff.”

All that to say, it's worrisome to think that batters are seeing Francis's pitches better this season. If his opponents can figure out what he’s throwing, he's lost his greatest advantage. He doesn't have the pure stuff to beat them without the element of surprise on his side.

The biggest problem seems to be Francis’s splitter. He is throwing the pitch almost two miles per hour slower than he did last season. The results have been poor:

Sometimes, it works for a pitcher to increase the velocity differential between his fastball and an offspeed pitch. Yet, in this case, I wonder if Francis's decreased splitter velocity is precisely what has allowed his opponents to better distinguish between his four-seam and split-finger, thereby helping them pounce on (or lay off) either pitch.

Moreover, as Sutton-Brown mentioned, Francis thrived last season by switching up his pitch mix against right and left-handed batters. This year, he is using essentially the same approach against righties and lefties alike: He's throwing his four-seam about 60% of the time, his splitter about 25% of the time, and his curveball about 15% of the time, with a few sliders and sinkers mixed in. That’s not so different from the approach he took against lefties last year. However, when he had the platoon advantage in 2024, his pitch mix was far more diverse. Both his slider and sinker also played meaningful roles in his repertoire. Without those additional weapons to diversify his movement and velocity spreads, Francis has fewer options to keep righty batters on their toes. 

Now, let me ask you again: Are you worried about Bowden Francis? For your sake, I still hope the answer is no. I hope my worries prove to be unfounded. But until I see Francis fooling hitters like he did last season, my concerns aren't going to go away.