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With this season in shambles and the Blue Jays trying to figure out who they can count on next year, Francis and rookie Joey Loperfido, who hit his first home run with his new team, were the standouts in Sunday’s 1-0 win at Wrigley Field. But it was Francis who shone the brightest.

Perfect in his first trip through the lineup, the 28-year-old didn’t allow a runner to reach base until Michael Busch’s “excuse me” check-swing dribbler to the left side with one out in the fourth. Seiya Suzuki followed with a little duck snort to centre for another hit and Francis had to work out of a bases-loaded jam after shortstop Ernie Clement botched a toss to second that would have ended the inning.

You can tell by the final score that he did, ringing up Dansby Swanson for one of his seven strikeouts on the day. That was one shy of his career high, set the last time out.

Francis was untouched from that point until allowing a one-out double to Nico Hoerner in the seventh inning. The hard line drive hit toward the left-field corner was one of only four balls put in play against Francis at more than 100 miles per hour.

The dominant performances to start and end the Jays’ road trip followed two outstanding starts against the Baltimore Orioles, one of the game’s best-hitting clubs.

Over his past four starts, Francis has posted a sparkling 2.19 ERA. He has allowed just 13 hits and two walks over 24 2/3 innings while striking out 24. Opponents have hit just .153 against him.

That’s a strong statement to a team that will go into next season with only three spots filled in its starting rotation. It’s also a far cry from the Bowden Francis we saw earlier this season.

Francis, who came to the Jays along with Trevor Richards in a 2021 trade with Milwaukee for Rowdy Tellez,聽broke camp as the team’s fifth starter but lost the job after getting pounded in starts against the Astros and Yankees, allowing 12 runs on 12 hits, including four home runs, in 8 1/3 innings.

He was sent to the bullpen and soon landed on the injured list with tendinitis in his forearm. When he returned, the soft-spoken Floridian was used mostly as the long reliever/mop-up man that he had been last season, when he posted a 1.73 ERA in 20 relief outings.

Back in the rotation after the departure of Yusei Kikuchi opened up a spot, Francis has looked like a completely different pitcher.

He has drastically reduced the use of a curveball that wasn’t working聽鈥斅爃e threw it just twice among his 95 pitches Sunday聽鈥� and incorporated a split-fingered fastball that has gotten better and better as the season has progressed.

The splitter was devastating Sunday. Francis got five of his strikeouts with it and 16 other strikes over the course of his seven innings. Five splitters were put into play, four for outs. The other was the infield single by Busch that came off the bat at a whopping 48.7 miles per hour.

He leaned into the pitch more and more as the game went on, giving him a different look as he worked through the Cubs batting order a third time, something the Jays almost never let him do before this recent surge.

Francis had been allowed to face the same hitter more than twice in a game only eight times in his career prior to these last four starts, over which he has earned the trust to do it 16 times.

Yariel Rodriguez is showing well as the Jays advance his workload and young Jake Bloss, acquired from Houston in the Kikuchi trade along with Loperfido and Will Wagner, is ready and waiting in Triple-A. As Francis stakes his claim to a spot next season, that trio could provide the Jays with a reasonable enough bottom of the rotation in 2025 that they wouldn’t have to break the bank to bring in a big-time starter to join the returning Kevin Gausman, Jos茅 Berr铆os and Chris Bassitt.

Of course, no team can ever have enough pitching, but if Francis can continue to show well over his remaining seven or eight starts, the Jays might have one less thing to worry about over the off-season.

That just makes it easier to throw a boatload of money at the big power bats they so desperately need.