SAN FRANCISCO — Logan Webb won the game Monday night. Then he gave a concession speech.
“He’s going to win the Cy Young,” said Webb, complimenting San Diego Padres left-hander Blake Snell, the pitcher he outlasted and ultimately outperformed in the San Francisco Giants’ 2-1 victory. “He’s the best pitcher in baseball this year.”
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What is best will always be subjective, even in the minds of fellow pitchers. Snell has rate stats on his side. His 2.25 ERA is the lowest in the National League. Ask any NL West hitter to describe Snell’s comet-dust stuff and their face will contort like a toddler introduced to their first slice of lemon. Snell suppresses hits better than anyone (5.8 per nine innings), which counteracts his league-high 99 walks. It is not the most efficient way to post zeroes, though. Snell has faced a total of 11 batters all season after the sixth inning.
He is the celebrity chef who leaves the pots and pans for others to scour. He will give the Padres hitters every opportunity to win. And he will give the Padres bullpen every opportunity to blow it.
Webb is right. Snell probably will win the Cy Young Award for the second time.
But there is value in volume, too. And nobody has retired more major-league hitters this season than Webb, the Giants’ undisputed ace.
Snell departed after six innings with a 1-0 lead. Webb kept marching to the mound. He farmed groundballs like soybeans with his two-seamer and changeup as he worked one tidy inning after another. He whirled around and shouted encouragement to Marco Luciano after the 21-year-old rookie shortstop turned a double play to end the eighth. “That’s what I’m talking about!” And after the bottom of that inning, after pinch hitter Michael Conforto slapped a two-run hit against the Padres bullpen that put the Giants ahead, there was Webb, back on the mound for the ninth, wearing a uniform that might as well have been a splattered dishwasher’s apron, with enough fuel in his shoulder and fire in his chest to finish what he started.
The Giants have not played enough truly inspired games this season. Webb’s teammates appeared truly inspired to win for him Monday night. Rookie catcher Patrick Bailey handled a deft but imperfect throw to the plate from first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr. to execute a critical tag play in the ninth, and one routine grounder later, Webb recorded the 27th and most elusive out for a modern starting pitcher — an out that Snell has never recorded in 191 starts over his eight-year career — while completing both a victory and his major-league-leading 217th inning.
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“If you’re playing cards, he wants to beat you,” Conforto said of Webb. “If you play golf with him, he’s crazy competitive. He’s just one of those guys that has that drive. And when you don’t win, he’s gonna get frustrated. It’s an attitude that can be contagious and it should be. We should all be ultra-competitive that way.”
Webb won in almost every respect Monday night. The 26-year-old right-hander probably earned his way into at least a top-five mention on more NL Cy Young ballots. Webb also should have ample support in the Giants clubhouse to win the Willie Mac Award, which honors the club’s most inspirational player. But personal victories and accolades only count for so much. The Giants, like the Padres, are nearly drawing dead in the postseason shuffle. And while Snell expressed satisfaction at improving his Cy Young candidacy with six scoreless innings, Webb left no room for interpretation: team success is all that matters to him.
It matters so much that the franchise ace used his emerging platform to call for “big changes” this offseason.
“(The Cy Young is) definitely something I would like to do, but to be honest with you, winning is more fun,” Webb said. “If we don’t do that, it’s kind of a waste. I’m tired. I’m tired of losing. It’s not fun. We’ve got to make some big changes in here to create that winning culture. We want to show up every single year and try to win the whole thing. I mean, I think we’re there. I don’t know what it is. I’m just sick of losing, to be honest. It’s never fun.”
"I'm tired of losing."
Logan Webb isn't concerned with the Cy Young talk. He just wants to win 😤 pic.twitter.com/3GYsgtgEqS
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) September 26, 2023
Webb’s record this season is 11-13 in spite of his brilliance which includes a league-best WHIP, ground-ball rate and walk rate. Through almost no fault of his own, his victory Monday was just his second in 10 starts dating to the first week of August. The offensively challenged Giants have provided Webb with the worst average run support in the major leagues and are 15-18 in his starts this season, which is the Cliffs Notes version of why they won’t be a playoff team.
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Webb has generated 5.7 bWAR, which is twice as much as the next player (Wade Jr.) on the Giants roster. Yet embarrassingly, the Giants have a losing record in the 33 games when their most valuable player could impact the outcome.
Webb made it clear that things have to change next season, not to alleviate his personal frustrations but to indoctrinate the clubhouse with more players who find losing just as unacceptable as he does.
Asked what changes he would like to see, Webb, who became one of Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi’s rare long-term commitments when he signed a five-year, $90 million extension in April, criticized a clubhouse that enjoyed the wins but too easily brushed off the losses.
“We’ve got to come in here with the same winning mentality every single day,” Webb said. “Not saying we don’t have that. Just saying we need to throw a little extra onto that. I know (right-hander Alex) Cobb hasn’t been to the playoffs in a long time and I feel terrible for a guy like that. He pitches his ass off this year, he’s an All-Star, and he should be pitching in the playoffs. I want to help make that happen for him. It’s just tough.”
While both the Padres and Giants were attempting to hold on to infinitesimal playoff odds Tuesday, perhaps the Giants were motivated by a blue-flame desire that burned from their pilot light.
“Yes, we were out to win tonight’s game,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said. “But we were also kind of out to win tonight’s game for Logan Webb and make sure it was his night if he set it up that way. And he did.”
Last weekend at Dodger Stadium, Webb and Kapler held a 20-minute conversation as they walked in the outfield grass. It’s well established that Kapler’s managerial style is to let his players police themselves. But clearly, the Giants clubhouse needed more oversight this season. They didn’t have a Buster Posey, who could keep everyone in line without saying a word. They didn’t bring in a clubhouse mentor like Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Jason Heyward, who has exuded professionalism and accountability to some of his younger teammates. The Giants’ near-$350 million acquisition this past winter, shortstop Carlos Correa, might have provided that presence as a player with both prominence and permanence. But that deal fell apart over issues with his physical, leaving a mercenary roster.
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Webb is the only Giants player under contract past 2025. This clubhouse belongs to him more than anyone else, even if he’s not convinced that a starting pitcher who throws one day out of five should be the most vocal person in the room.
Other Giants players who have attempted to bring professionalism to the clubhouse have been frustrated by the results.
Outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, second baseman Thairo Estrada, and infielder Wilmer Flores are among those who sought to refocus a clubhouse that has included too many ho-hum reactions to losing along with a near-zealotry to Pusoy, a Filipino card game that Joc Pederson and some other Giants players appear to find more compelling than studying the night’s opposing starting pitcher.
Some Giants players noticed small but telling signs in the clubhouse this season. The blaring, postgame victory playlist is a staple in most clubhouses. At some point, though, someone decided that it would be appropriate to play Bob Marley music in the clubhouse after losses.
“When’s the last time you heard music in a major-league clubhouse after a loss?” one Giants player, granted anonymity in order to speak freely, said. “I mean, you shouldn’t hang your head for too long after a loss. But you shouldn’t be OK with it, either.”
That’s part of the problem in San Francisco. The implied message after losses: “Don’t worry ’bout a thing. ‘Cause every little thing is gonna be all right.”
Everything was not all right. The losses should have bothered some people more than they did. That’s not the case for Webb, though, who had to laugh when asked if he channeled his personal frustrations about losing into how he pitched.
“To be honest, I’m frustrated all the time,” he said. “I’m always mad at myself for something. Maybe lately I’ve been a little more frustrated out there. I gave up a run and felt I let the team down. The boys came and picked me up. I knew going back out there, it was my turn to get their backs.
“That was a fun one.”
(Photo: Sergio Estrada / USA Today)
Andrew Baggarly is a senior writer for The Athletic and covers the San Francisco Giants. He has covered Major League Baseball for more than two decades, including the Giants since 2004 for the Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News and Comcast SportsNet Bay Area. He is the author of two books that document the most successful era in franchise history: “A Band of Misfits: Tales of the 2010 San Francisco Giants” and “Giant Splash: Bondsian Blasts, World Series Parades and Other Thrilling Moments By the Bay.” Follow Andrew on Twitter @extrabaggs
