Bowden Francis won the AL Pitcher of the Month Award. That’ll happen when you post a 1.05 ERA with 39 Ks in 34 innings. In the latter four starts of the month, he posted an amazing 0.310 WHIP, the lowest in MLB history in 4 consecutive starts totaling at least 20 innings. It’s kind of an arbitrary cut off, but at the same time “best ever”s don’t really happen in a sport that’s over 150 years old. It was an amazing run that he can hopefully continue tomorrow afternoon.
In the meantime, though, the Jays are coming off their first off day following a stretch of 18 games in 17 days (assuming you don’t mentally teleport the first half of last Monday’s double header back to June), of which they surprisingly won 10. It’d be great to keep that momentum up, especially if it’s fueled by continued performance from some of the young guys who are hoping to contribute next year.
The next week and a bit will be tough, as our official inter-league ‘rivals’, the Phillies, come to town to start an eight game stretch against the top three teams in the NL East. They’ll go to Atlanta this weekend, then come home to host the streaking Mets. Once they make it through that, though, they get a pretty manageable finish against the mediocre Cardinals, Rangers, Rays, and Red Sox and then the putrid Marlins to close the season.
Tonight, Chris Bassitt (9-13, 4.27) looks to deliver his second good performance in a row after a rough stretch against a tough Phillies lineup, while the Jays’ lineup hopes to look more like it did on Saturday, when they pour 15 runs on the Twins, than they did in the other 5 games this past week when they totaled 8. Here are the full lineups: