ARLINGTON, Texas — Back before baseball’s tech revolution, Pete Walker would stay up for hours after games breaking down video of his pitchers, trying to identify any little inconsistency or flaw that was either the cause of, or precursor to trouble. 

If something was off, it was up to him to pick it up.

“Now, we have skeletal systems, so you know if someone is off by two, three, four, five degrees,” said the Toronto Blue Jays pitching coach. “It almost sets off a red flag … so we can break down a delivery quicker, we can maybe catch somebody a little bit sooner. And we’re getting better at it. There’s still a little bit of learning curve because you also don’t want to overdo it. Every little thing you see, you don’t want to cloud the pitcher’s mind.”

The difference between normal physical fluctuations and problematic variances can be subtle, which is why body-movement trackers aren’t a catch-all solution to a struggling pitcher’s problems. But they are a tool to more accurately diagnose causes, which is how Bowden Francis took an important step righting himself Tuesday with five shutout innings in a 2-0 loss to the Texas Rangers.

All season long Francis has been searching for a patch to solve his issues with fastball command. And while he’s working through a number of issues simultaneously — his splitter movement has been inconsistent and his slider usage has slid — his mechanics being slightly off showed up on his skeletal breakdowns, offering an explanation of why he struggled to locate his fastball atop the strike zone.

“When your body’s a little bit out of whack — and it’s really not a huge correction, but it’s something that he’s focused on right now, more posture than anything else, not opening up too soon, in general terms — your slot might drop and lose a little effectiveness locating the fastball,” said Walker. 

Against the Rangers, his fastball location was better — there were still some heart-of-the-plate misses that went unpunished — leading to eight whiffs on 30 swings. He got three more whiffs on six swings at his splitter while he still threw only five sliders and five curveballs among his 75 pitches.

Manager John Schneider lifted him after Josh Smith’s leadoff single in the sixth, not wanting to test the right-hander’s troubles facing a lineup for the third time in a 0-0 game. Another inning would certainly have helped the Blue Jays with rookie righty Paxton Schultz due to start Wednesday’s finale, but better to cement some gains after Francis got through five for just the second time in his last seven starts.

The Blue Jays offence, 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position through the first eight innings, could, of course, have provided some buffer that might have made Schneider’s decisions a little bit easier. 

Instead it was another night of non-stop leverage, with the Rangers finally breaking through in the eighth against Chad Green, as Josh Jung punched a two-out RBI single to centre to plate the go-ahead run before an ecstatic Globe Life Field crowd of 25,818.

An errant Alejandro Kirk throw on a back-pick attempt at third base allowed Wyatt Langford to score with an insurance run and Robert Garcia locked down the ninth to keep the Blue Jays (26-28) from reaching the .500 mark.