Giants have squandered Logan Webb’s talents; an anonymous group changed that for a day

SAN FRANCISCO — A starting pitcher spends much more time studying the opposing lineup than his own. But you could forgive Logan Webb if he did a double take when the San Francisco Giants refreshed the video board in their clubhouse Saturday morning.

Rafael Devers and Jung Hoo Lee were the only vestiges from the group that started behind Webb on opening day. Rookie slugger Bryce Eldridge, promoted in May, was in there, of course. As for the rest? Well, you could say the Giants were out of their depth.

If the Giants had tried to send Saturday’s lineup to Goodyear or Glendale for a Cactus League exhibition, they might have been fined by Major League Baseball for not having enough regulars. Under no mid-March scenario did they envision starting a major-league game with names like Drew Cavanaugh, Buddy Kennedy, Osleivis Basabe and Turner Hill.

Hill’s debut Saturday came after he forced his way to the big leagues with a 26-game hitting streak at Triple-A Sacramento. He’s an undrafted free agent from Marietta College in Ohio. It’s important to celebrate stories of improbable success, even if they tend to happen only under the most imperfect of team circumstances.

If the Giants’ imperfect lineup didn’t appear to bother Webb on the mound Saturday, maybe that’s because he is the least likely person in their clubhouse to put on airs. He might be the least cliquish and most inclusive player in the league. When Webb tossed the last of his warmup pitches, as he viewed it, the players behind him were just as much his teammates as the group that backed him against the New York Yankees in March.

And besides, it’s not as if it had gone well with the fully assembled group behind him. Webb had taken the mound 21 times. The Giants were 8-13 in those games. Four of his starts were dominant outings in which he threw at least eight innings and allowed two runs or fewer. The Giants were 1-3 in those starts.

Sound familiar? The Giants have squandered Webb’s starts for the better part of five years. They’ve had functional bullpens and fractional ones. They’ve employed three managers. The entire roster has come and gone. Webb is the only Giant who remains from the 2022 season. The cast has changed, yet the script stayed the same: The Giants simply haven’t been able to leverage their best starting pitcher into winning an acceptable number of games. Not enough to make the postseason in any of those years, anyway.

Entering Saturday, here is what Webb had done in five seasons since 2022:

Three-time All-Star

Three-time top-6 finisher in NL Cy Young voting

Three-time NL leader in innings pitched

3.27 ERA

2.98 FIP

4.12 K/BB

1.16 WHIP

MLB-most 99 quality starts

Here is the Giants’ record in Webb’s starts: 75-78.

When we rank things, we tend to focus on the best of the best. But the Giants’ total mediocrity in spite of Webb might rank No. 1 on this sad list: the biggest waste of talent in Bay Area pro sports history.

Yet Webb, seemingly unaffected, keeps taking the mound and giving the Giants a chance. He did it again Saturday afternoon, retaining his focus, paying attention to detail, tweaking his pitch mix and keeping the Colorado Rockies off balance while holding them to a run on four hits in six innings. Leadoff man Drew Gilbert deposited a home run atop the right-field arcade and hit a two-run single as the Giants won 7-1 in front of a paid crowd of 35,069.

Even though the Giants are playing games with zero playoff implications, Webb said he feels just as much responsibility to be a standard setter on a young team as he would on a seasoned group sniffing October baseball. Maybe even more.

“It doesn’t matter what team you’re on,” Webb said. “If you’re the starting pitcher, you’re always just trying to set the tone. But definitely with our team right now — I saw yesterday we have 18 guys with less than two years of service time — so yeah, I’ve been here for a while and I’m … not Hunter Pence, right? I’m not gonna be the most vocal guy, but I can do it with how I work each day. I think that’s a valuable thing as well.”

There was a lighthearted moment in the second inning when Webb struck out Colorado’s Zac Veen. It was the 1,100th strikeout of Webb’s career, and apparently, that number was round enough for the Giants Productions crew to post a congratulatory message on the scoreboard. Webb sheepishly accepted the ovation from the crowd. The next batter, Connor Norby, gave him a confused look as if uncertain that he should get in the box.

“I think it messed up Norby a little bit,” Webb said. “He was like, ‘What’s going on?’ And I’m like, ‘No, just get in the box. We’re fine.’ But the fans have treated me so well here, and to hear people cheering for that is cool. I mean, there was no significance of it. I didn’t even know that was going to happen. Hopefully there’s some better milestones further down the road. But yeah, I don’t think that was, like, a tip-the-cap moment or wave-the-glove moment. … But obviously, a very nice gesture.”

Here is a better round number that sums up what Webb has provided to the Giants: His outing Saturday was his 100th quality start (at least six innings, no more than three earned runs) over the last five seasons. He’s consistently given the Giants a chance to win, which is all a starting pitcher can hope to do.

“He’s ultraconfident out there,” Giants manager Tony Vitello said. “He’s super competitive. I mean, you would’ve thought it was the end of the world because he gave up a run. That’s kind of the competitive spirit you want your guys to have.

“Those younger guys have talked about (how) we need to play better when he’s pitching. … I’m not talking about scoring. You’re not going to score (seven) runs every time. But every pitcher should have a little bit different flavor when you come to the park. You should know who’s pitching, and it should add to the style of the day. But I think everybody in San Francisco knows how you should show up to the park if you know that Webby’s got the ball.”

The Giants plan to keep giving Webb the ball. They’ve been in this situation before, out of contention in September, but with Cy Young votes or 200-inning benchmarks to chase. Those goals aren’t there this season — missing a month with knee inflammation took him out of the running — but Vitello said there continues to be value in sending Webb to represent the club every fifth day.

Webb wouldn’t want it any other way. He was struck by a line drive on the back of his right shoulder in the fifth inning and convinced head athletic trainer Dave Groeschner that he could continue. Webb went back out to complete the sixth inning, too. Then the shoulder started to stiffen up, so Webb relented. He said he expects to make his next start.

He wants to be out there for his teammates, even if they’re not the group anyone expected to play behind him. With so many veterans out of the lineup, and third baseman Matt Chapman out for the rest of the season after having sports hernia surgery, it’s more important that the veterans who remain embrace active leadership roles.

“We’ve got some good dudes here that do things well,” Webb said. “I really wish Chappy was here. He’s helped me a ton, just watching him work every day. … If you can set the tone with how you go about your business every day, not just the days you (pitch) but also how you do your work and how you treat people here, I think that’s a big thing.”

Hill’s hitting streak was unofficially snapped after he went 0 for 3, but his bases-loaded sacrifice fly in the fourth inning gave the Giants a lead that they did not relinquish. More than two dozen friends and family traveled from Ohio and waved a Marietta College flag for each of his plate appearances. It’s been a remarkable journey for the 27-year-old outfielder, who hit .433 as a college senior but wasn’t considered a draft prospect and didn’t receive a spot to play in the MLB Draft League in 2022.

It was only after drafted players left the league that Hill received an invitation to play from the West Virginia Black Bears. He hit .391 in 37 games, won the league batting title and received an offer to play for the Washington (Pa.) Wild Things in the independent Frontier League. He had reported to the team’s training camp and was preparing to play when he received the news: The San Francisco Giants had purchased his contract for $15,000.

The Giants scout who identified Hill wasn’t an amateur area scout or a pro scout who happened to see him play. It was Farhan Zaidi, who was the Giants’ president of baseball operations in 2022. Amid his vast responsibilities running all the departments in the Giants’ front office, Zaidi still found the time to pore over MLB Draft League statistics and look for flecks of gold. Going back to his first Rule 5 pick with the Giants, Drew Ferguson, Zaidi displayed a fondness for scooping up a specific type: Get hitters with notably low strikeout rates and a high on-base percentage, traits that tend to stabilize at any level, and see if they can figure out the rest.

With a .463 on-base percentage for the Black Bears, Turner fit the bill. And this season, after a change in approach that allowed him to access a bit more gap power, he started to do the rest.

Maybe Hill isn’t a prospect. But he was hitting .353 at Sacramento. The Giants would have damaged their reputation among their minor-league players if they didn’t pay heed to those numbers and promote him. Especially amid a season when there’s nothing left to lose.

“The sac fly was great, but he’s probably going to need to make sure he works above the baseball at times and doesn’t lift anything,” Vitello said. “But that’s kind of related to (doing) a really good job of keeping his hands back. … To come up in that situation with the bases loaded and the crowd’s cheering and it’s his second at-bat, to keep his heart rate to where it looked like he was under control, I thought was pretty impressive.”

Hill said he would have liked to collect his first hit. But helping to set up Webb for a victory was a pretty good consolation prize. On so many nights over the past five years, it’s been a feat beyond anyone’s ken in a Giants uniform.

“It was everything I expected,” Hill said. “You know, the nerves, the excitement, everything you can imagine.”