Nothing goes right for Blue Jays in no-hit loss to Astros

HOUSTON — Moments after Bowden Francis threw his first pitch as a big-league starting pitcher, left fielder Daulton Varsho was scrambling to retrieve it from the grass at Minute Maid Park. Two batters later, Houston Astros right fielder Kyle Tucker had homered to the opposite field. And before the inning ended, Astros catcher Yainer Diaz had added a home run of his own.

Once Jeremy Pena added a third home run in the bottom of the second, it was clear Monday wouldn’t go the way Francis or the Toronto Blue Jays had planned. As it turned out, pitching wasn’t their only problem as Ronel Blanco, a 30-year-old swingman making just his eighth career start, no-hit the Blue Jays with a dominant pitching performance on the way to a 10-0 Astros win.

"Give him credit, that's really hard to do," Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “(At the same time) a no-hitter’s an outlier, you know? I think we're going all right with where we hope to be in terms of what the offence is supposed to do. Tonight, it's just one of those nights. You give credit to a guy that does something really, really hard to accomplish. And a loss is still a loss. You move on.”

Even the best offences in baseball will struggle at times, but at minimum this loss shows the Blue Jays are still trying to find their way offensively. Bo Bichette (neck spasms) was out of the starting lineup as the Blue Jays were held without a hit for the first time since last July in Detroit.

As for the Blue Jays’ pitching, the results simply weren’t there. Francis is here to help now, not just to learn on the job in the hopes that lessons learned now will pay off later. So to allow seven runs on 10 hits just isn’t enough, even for a No. 5 starter.

It got worse once Francis left, as Genesis Cabrera walked Yordan Alvarez to begin the bottom of the seventh before allowing home runs to Tucker and Diaz. Considering Cabrera’s on this team specifically to retire left-handed hitters like Alvarez and Tucker, his performance was a lowlight, and that’s saying something considering how poorly the series opener went for the Blue Jays.

Later, Isiah Kiner-Falefa would pitch a clean inning, but any time your third baseman had the best pitching performance of the game, it’s a day best forgotten.

Cabrera appealed his three-game suspension Monday afternoon, with a verdict from MLB possible as soon as Tuesday. But where Cabrera’s performance was without positives, it’s worth considering the full picture with Francis. Nothing changes the fundamental facts of Monday’s game, but there was some nuance to be found in the right-hander’s season debut. 

“Weird outing for him,” Schneider said. “They had a pretty specific plan (attacking) the stuff up in the zone, which is where he pitches. Credit to them. Got (seven) strikeouts and struck out some tough hitters a couple times.”

Francis did consistently challenge the Astros – easier said than done against their formidable lineup. Of his 79 pitches, 61 were strikes, and of the 26 hitters he faced, just one walked. That conviction in his pitches is something Francis can work with ahead of his next start, Sunday in New York.

That aggressive approach also allowed the 27-year-old to pitch relatively deep into the game, as he completed 5.1 innings in his first game action in 12 days. 

Even from a stuff standpoint, Francis had some flashes of promise with a fastball that topped out at 96.1 m.p.h. and a slow curveball that induced some off-balance swings from Houston’s hitters, especially Alex Bregman, who whiffed on it three times.

"The curveball was good and the heater, they were on it when it was up in the zone," Francis said. "That's my strength and they knew I was coming with it and they were ready for it."

To be less predictable, Francis plans to mix in fastballs down in the strike zone, just as his teammate Kevin Gausman has.

“That’s where the growth comes,” he said. 

Now, those two pitches accounted for 62 of the 79 pitches Francis threw, which may have allowed Houston’s hitters to get a little too comfortable. That’s where his slider and splitter are so important, but he has to execute those pitches for them to work. The middle-middle slider he hung to Pena caught too much of the plate.

It’s too early in the season to see where this leads for Francis, but one way or another the Blue Jays need contributions from emerging young starters as well as their veterans. Last year, Toronto was the only MLB team without at least one start by a rookie pitcher, and their last rookie pitcher to make a significant contribution was Alek Manoah (2021), who’s slated to pitch a three-inning simulated game Tuesday with Danny Jansen catching.

By contrast, the Astros have had a pipeline of rookie pitchers join their rotation from Framber Valdez (2019) and Cristian Javier (2020) to Luis Garcia (2021) and Hunter Brown (2023). It’s an impressive group that’s allowed the Astros to sustain success despite many free-agent departures.

At 30, Blanco’s not exactly an up-and-coming prospect, but his stellar work was more than enough to deflate the Blue Jays Monday. Now, it’s on their offence to rebound the way they did last July, when Jansen hit a game-winning, extra-innings homer in Detroit the day after the Tigers held them hitless.