One-two punch
Why one pitch gives San Francisco Giants belief in Logan Webb
After his last start, Logan Webb was hesitantly optimistic but slightly coy.
“I think those first couple outings, you guys know what pitch I’m talking about, I wasn’t very confident in,” Webb said. “I think we’re getting closer to getting that pitch where it was last year.” That pitch is Webb’s slider. Pairing it with his sinker, Webb developed the devastating one-two punch that he rode to the second-lowest ERA in the majors during his final 20 starts of last season. Through his first six starts this season, though, Webb relied on a different pitch mix and, likewise, hasn’t been the same pitcher.
Webb has been more reliant on his changeup to start this season than at any point since he returned from a shoulder strain last July and began his ascension to the club’s young ace. He threw the pitch 36% of the time in April, an even higher rate than in his similarly rocky start to last season, while turning to his sinker only 34% of the time and his slider on 28% of his pitches, his lowest usage of both pitches since last May.
“It’s the same thing I did last year,” Webb said. “I started off and my slider wasn’t great, so I went heavy changeup. Just throwing it a little too much. It was the same thing this year.”
But then, last Friday in St. Louis, that sinker-slider mix reappeared.
While limiting the Cardinals to a run over six innings — his strongest performance since tossing eight innings in his second start of the year — Webb threw more sinkers, more sliders and fewer changeups than he had in any start this season.
“It wasn’t a good pitch, so I wasn’t throwing it as much,” Webb said of the slider. But, in his bullpen session before the St. Louis start, Webb said, he “thought I turned a corner.”
Sinkers: 44%. Sliders: 34%. Changeup: 20%. The breakdown bore a striking resemblance to the final months of last season, when, would you look at that, Webb threw 44% sinkers, just under 30% sliders, and right around 20% changeups.
It was when he got the slider working last season, “that’s when he started to become Logan Webb,” catcher and close confidant Curt Casali said.
“When that pitch is on, that really rounds out the arsenal,” echoed pitching coach Andrew Bailey. “And when he feels confident throwing it in terms of execution, it’s another level.”
Let’s take a step back and appreciate that, even while searching for the feel of his best out pitch, Webb, who scheduled to start the Giants’ series finale Wednesday at Colorado, still leads MLB with five wins. His 3.48 ERA is perfectly palatable — quite an improvement, in fact, over his 5.34 ERA through six starts last season. Sure, he allowed a career-high 11 hits in one start this season but still has yet to allow more than
four runs in an outing and is missing barrels in the 80th percentile of MLB pitchers.
“To put the numbers up that he's putting up right now and working through those things, that's what aces do,” Bailey said. “The days they don't have it, they still find a way to go five or six and limit damage, and that's what he's been able to do.”
The biggest difference has been Webb's inability to miss bats.
His whiff percentage ranks just in the 31st percentile leaguewide, and his strikeout rate is even lower. Even his last time out against the Cardinals, Webb got swings and misses on just two of his sliders and struck out only three batters.
“Instead of throwing it with two strikes and putting it in play, last year it was throw it with two strikes and it was a strikeout,” Webb said. “The hitters know that, too. When I'm throwing it, it's either a ball or left in the zone. So trying to find that happy medium of being to throw it where I want to throw it and with the sharpness of how I want to throw it.”
There is a reason why Casali said Webb is “right on schedule.”
It just so happened to also be in his seventh start last season, on May 11 against the Texas Rangers, that something clicked for Webb and the slider. In that start, Webb debuted a combo of at least 25% sliders and 30% sinkers that he used so effectively for the rest of the season, striking out 10 batters in six innings in a sign of things to come. He went his next 13 starts without allowing more than one earned run and went unbeaten over his final 20.
“Getting that slider on point is a priority,” Bailey said. But, he added, “you look at any trends in major league baseball and you have guys that peak earlier in the year and guys that peak later. hink it's just a natural progression.”