TORONTO — Bowden Francis walked off the mound after retiring Ceddanne Rafaela and escaping a Boston Red Sox threat in the fifth inning and just like that, his storybook season was over.
The Toronto Blue Jays starter contributed five scoreless innings in Tuesday’s 6-5 loss to the Red Sox and, with just four games remaining on the schedule, he won’t take the mound again in 2024.
Now, with the off-season unofficially underway for the right-hander, he can begin his reflection process. And he sure has a lot of positives to look back on. Francis’s resurgence has arguably been the best story of the season for the Blue Jays and it’s also altered the trajectory of his career.
He began the campaign in the rotation and struggled over two starts before a demotion to the bullpen. The 28-year-old was optioned to Buffalo in July and that could have been the point where his season faded into obscurity. However, it didn’t and when Francis returned a few weeks later taking the place of Yusei Kikuchi, he was essentially a different pitcher.
Francis allowed just three hits over his five frames on Tuesday, walking one and striking out four. He didn’t get the win as the Blue Jays’ bullpen coughed up three runs and allowed the Red Sox to tie the game in the eighth inning, before right-hander Tommy Nance surrendered three more runs in the 10th.
Nonetheless, Francis’s start won’t be forgotten because it put the finishing touch on an impressive string of eight starts in which he posted a minuscule 1.33 ERA over 54 innings. That span, of course, included the right-hander losing two no-hitters in the ninth inning.
As Francis turns his focus to the off-season, the subject was also a topic of conversation before the game regarding prospect Orelvis Martinez. The Blue Jays completed a procedural move on Tuesday, reinstating him from the suspended list and optioning him to their spring training complex.
Martinez received an 80-game suspension in June after testing positive for a banned performance-enhancing substance, a significant blow considering the 22-year-old is the Blue Jays’ top position-player prospect and could’ve benefited from playing time following a busy trade deadline that created plenty of space on the major-league roster.
Blue Jays manager John Schneider said the club doesn’t have a definitive plan in place for the infielder but said winter ball could be an option. He added that the club expects Martinez to be prepared to play either second base or third next season.
“It’s a big off-season for him,” said Schneider. “We talked about that with him when he was here and when that unfortunate news broke. It’s a big off-season for him to kind of re-prove to himself, the industry, everyone, that he’s a pretty good player. It’s going to take a lot of work, it’s going to take a lot of humility and he’s going to have to catch up on some at-bats and some reps that he missed.”
