Call me crazy, but I think I picked up on Bowden tipping his breaking balls and I think Minnesota picked up on it also. The first few hitters were dispatched quite easily but after that it looked to me like they had the timing down on both the slider and the curve pretty much perfectly. Almost like his body in his delivery as just a bit more upright when he threw the breaking balls vs the fastball.
First three batters he faced struck out, and got 4 swinging strikes. Then, of the next 7 hitters he faced he recorded exactly 0 swinging strikes, and gave up EVs of 100.4, 99.9, 103, 98, 100.5, 104.5, 74.2, 94.2 and 91.1.
Especially after the Jay Jackson situation if I were the video guys I’d be really looking at Francis’ video from today to make sure he didn’t have something giving away the breaking balls
I also acknowledge this could be nothing more than a 10 batter sample size being weird