Bowden Francis Can't Keep the Ball in the Yard

No pitcher in baseball has given up more home runs at this point in the season than Bowden Francis (15). Through ten starts, he’s given up homers in eight games and multiples in four of those. With the usual caveat of small sample size tucked squarely under my arm, I went back and looked at all of the home runs he has allowed to see if there were any trends or identifiable causes for concern.

The first trend is thankfully something that we won’t have to worry about again this season. With Toronto having already played a home and away series against Seattle, Rowdy Tellez shouldn’t get a chance to face Francis again in 2025. Of course, this is where I am obligated to mention that Tellez and Francis were traded for each other in 2021 (Trevor Richards also came to the Jays in that deal), and Tellez certainly got the best of Francis this year. In Toronto, it was a first pitch, four-seam fastball off the plate inside that Tellez got around on quickly and put over the fence. In Seattle, it was a fastball again, this time on a 2-0 count on the outside part of the plate, but with the same result.

Last year, Francis threw a first-pitch fastball about half the time. This year, that rate has jumped up closer to two-thirds of the time. So, I wondered if his opponents were hunting for that first-pitch fastball. After all, in Francis's last start, he served up a first-pitch fastball down the middle, which Gavin Sheets crushed into the seats. However, aside from the two first-pitch homers by Sheets and Tellez, the only other first-pitch blast Francis has given up this season was on a down-and-away curveball that Riley Greene knocked out. Back to the drawing board. The home runs have come in every possible count, with the exception of 3-0. Five have come in even counts, three with Francis ahead and seven with him behind (including two full-count home runs).

Hitters don’t seem to be teeing off on a specific pitch either. Seven of the home runs Francis has given up have come against his four-seam fastball, five against his splitter and three on his curve. He throws the fastball more than any other pitch, so by percentage, the splitter is leaving the yard most often, but not by a significant amount.

Comparing Francis to the other mainstays of Toronto's rotation, he's thrown the fewest pitches over the heart of the plate. Francis’ 223 trails José Berríos (241), Kevin Gausman (276) and Chris Bassitt (262), but the other three have all kept their home run numbers down. Gausman and Bassitt combined have given up the same number of homers as Francis, despite throwing more pitches/innings/games.

All four of those pitchers are right-handed throwers, and as such, opposing managers tend to try to stack their lineups with lefties to take advantage of that platoon split. With his conversion from a reliever to a full-time starter, Francis has seen a massive spike in the number of lefties he is forced to pitch against – a 13.3% increase from last season (45.8% to 59.1%). Compared to the other starters, all veterans, who have seen 5.5% (Berríos), 0.8% (Gausman) and 1.0% (Bassitt) increases from 2024 to 2025, it is understandable that this would be a bigger adjustment for the less experienced Francis.

The one thing that is undeniable, and I’ve buried it a little here, is that the vast majority of the damage against Francis is being done by lefties. Of the 15 homers he has surrendered, 12 have been to players hitting from the left side of the plate. I’ve looked at a lot of tape and sifted through a lot of data, and I can’t identify what it is that those hitters are seeing, or what Francis is doing differently that has led to that extreme of a split, but there has to be something going on. Two of his worst pitches of the year were middle-middle offerings to Christian Walker and Alex Bregman, and those represent two of the righties that have taken Francis out of the park. I'd argue that none of the home run pitches he has thrown to lefties were as meaty as those two. Some have caught more plate than is ideal, but for the most part, the lefties that have gone deep have done it on arguably tougher pitches.

I wasn’t content to just look at Francis’ first nine starts this season, so for comparison, I also looked at his final nine starts of last season. This, of course, includes the historic span of games that earned Francis AL Pitcher of the Month honours for August. This also includes two games where Francis took no-hitters into the ninth inning. Both of those no-hit bids were broken up with home runs. There was another one-hit game in that stretch where the only hit he surrendered was a round-tripper. Overall, in those final nine games, Francis gave up seven home runs – a total he would surely trade for at this point. Even then, for as well as he pitched, the percentage of the hits he gave up that left the yard was higher last season (29%) than this year (27%). A fly ball pitcher is going to have unlucky stretches, and hopefully that’s all this turns out to be, but the focus has certainly been drawn, and the Jays can’t afford to have another questionable spot in the rotation if they’re serious about their postseason aspirations. Last year, Francis' splitter never left the yard. In fact, the only hits to come off of his splitter were singles. Lefties barrelled his splitter just three times, with all three dying at the warning track. This season, the splitter is at five barrels already, with three of those leaving the park as homers.

On April 28, Leo Morgenstern wrote about Francis not fooling hitters anymore and noted the velocity drop on his splitter. The next day (April 29), five different Red Sox went yard. In the next game (Cleveland at home), Francis kept the ball in the park. In Seattle, it was Tellez (of course) going deep, and in Francis' next start (Detroit at home), two Tigers left their cage (that’s not a real saying, but I’m going with it). The Padres continued that trend. Fernando Tatis Jr. leads their team in homers, but it was the matchups against the lefties Sheets (HR) and Jackson Merrill (two hits) that produced the damage in Francis' four innings of work.

These heat maps show Francis' splitter locations in 2024 (left/top) and 2025 (right/bottom). It was definitely catching more of the zone last season, and opposing batters produced a wOBA of .173 and an average exit velocity of 87.9 mph against it. This season, despite the pitch missing the zone more often, those numbers have jumped to a .416 wOBA and a 94.8 mph average exit velocity. With its decreased velocity, the case can be made that hitters are able to pick up the splitter a bit sooner to lay off when it's coming in low and punish it when it catches the zone.

The good news, at least in the short term, is that Francis' matchup tonight is with the Texas Rangers. Their top four home run hitters are all right-handed bats, and their top lefty (Corey Seager) is currently on the 10-day IL. Catcher Jonah Heim represents the biggest left-handed power threat. Or if you prefer a dark horse, watch out for the at-bats against Alejandro Osuna, the Rangers rookie who just made his MLB debut on Sunday. He's made some hard contact in his first two games (extreme small sample alert!) and could run into one if things don't break Francis' way.