Yesterday I saw Logan Webb, the best starting pitcher on the 2023 San Francisco Giants, come within a strike of pitching a complete game shutout against the Texas Rangers, a team with one of the toughest lineups in baseball. I had wanted to see him for a long time since he emerged as the ace of the staff during the 107-win 2021 season. In an age when pitch counts are monitored religiously and starting pitching is often treated as an anachronism, Webb is a welcome throwback to the old school, where a starter pitched every game with the full intention of throwing a full nine innings–finishing the job you started, as the saying went. Armed with an assortment of pitches designed to induce soft ground balls and get outs with maximum efficiency, Webb routinely completes at least seven innings in virtually every start, with one complete game shutout to his credit this season. Fans have come to expect this whenever he’s on the mound, and I wasn’t the only one watching his pitch count to see how deep he might pitch into the game. When he wasn’t at the magic number 100 after the eighth inning, just about everyone in the park hoped he’d come out for the ninth, and he got a loud ovation when he trotted out to the mound. Webb got the first two hitters and had two strikes on the third when he gave up a double. Giants manager Gabe Kapler was booed loudly when he pulled Webb for his closer, especially when the next batter beat out a soft ground ball and enabled the runner to score and tie the game at 1-1. The Giants thankfully managed to win the game with a home run in the tenth inning, ensuring that Webb’s masterpiece didn’t go to waste.
Nowadays, the Giants need every start that Webb can give them. When I last wrote, they were hitting the cover off the ball and scoring routinely in double digits or nearly so. Since then, their bats have gone so cold that they literally burned sage in their batting cage on Saturday in hopes of ending their slump. I’ve mostly given up on the prospect of October baseball this year, but they’re still in the neighborhood of contention for a playoff spot in the event the ritual works and dispels the bad juju. Stranger things have happened.
