Olney: Blue Jays need Francis to improve with lack of starters on trade market
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Fresh off the heels of their 20th comeback win of the season on Monday night, the Toronto Blue Jays have climbed to a season-best six games over .500 as they continue to ride their hottest stretch of the year to date.
Toronto’s offensive production has come from almost every part of their lineup over the past few weeks, with names as Addison Barger, Alejandro Kirk, George Springer, Ernie Clement, and after Monday’s heroics, even Jonatan Clase playing significant roles.
The offence has overcome a sluggish start to the season and has now scored at least five runs in eight of their past 11 games, posting a plus-26 run differential across that span.
Paired with the team’s MLB-leading 100 extra-base hits and .313 average with runners in scoring position over the past month, and it’s easy to see how the Blue Jays have been able to start winning games on a consistent basis.
However, some questions regarding the roster as it's currently constructed do still remain, especially in the starting rotation.
Bowden Francis has largely been unable to recapture the magic from the second half of last season, pitching to a 6.12 earned run average while surrendering 19 home runs, the highest mark in the big leagues.
Since the calendar turned over to June, Francis has now failed to pitch into the fourth inning in back-to-back starts, with the team’s only losses this month coming in games that the right-hander has taken the mound.
The uncertainty surrounding Max Scherzer’s return from a thumb injury, combined with a lack of pitching depth in the upper levels of the minor leagues, makes for a tough fix at this point in the season.
"The fact that they’re willing to live with Francis’ struggles tells you everything about where they are,” said ESPN’s Buster Olney on TSN1050’s First Up Tuesday morning.
“In most circumstances, you might have a situation where you could send a guy to the minor leagues. He could figure it out and then come back…but instead, what you heard from John Schneider the other day was, ‘We need him, he’s got to figure it out.”
“A different pitch mix, adjustments on command, whatever it is,” he said. “They need him.”
Francis is tentatively scheduled for his next start against the Philadelphia Phillies on Saturday, but the leash on the 29-year-old will continue to tighten as the Blue Jays look to avoid falling out of the mix in a competitive American League wild card picture.
Olney also shared that any potential solution to the lack of major-league pitching options on the roster will likely not come via trade.
“We are, I think, conditioned through the years to looking at those mid-season trades, going back to the days of the Jays trading for David Cone down the stretch, as being difference-making,” he said.
“What the feedback I’m getting right now from executives is they don’t think it’s going to be an especially active time at the trade deadline. They don’t think there’s going to be a lot of action, they don’t think there’s going to be difference-making players that are on the move.
"But in terms of volume, a GM said to me last night that it’s going to be a dud because a lot of the teams we look at as sellers, [Colorado] Rockies, [Chicago] White Sox, [Miami] Marlins, in the mind of this general manager, he’s like, ‘They don’t have crap to sell’. There are not a lot of good players that they’re willing to market right now so the early reviews on what we’re going to see in the trade market are pretty lukewarm.”
The Blue Jays will look to make it five series wins in a row as they take on the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday night in the second contest of the three-game set.