Webb shakes off rough spring, delivers strong outing in Giants’ opener.
Webb shakes off rough spring, delivers strong outing in Giants’ opener originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN DIEGO — The sinker ended up exactly in the heart of the strike zone, and 20-year-old Jackson Merrill could do nothing but take a quick glance at where it had ended up and then drop his bat in the dirt. Logan Webb later said the pitch was about as good a sinker as he has thrown in the big leagues, which is saying something given how dominant Webb was last season.
The Giants have built their rotation around Webb, the reigning MLB innings leader, and in his third straight season-opener, he showed that he’s again ready to carry a heavy load. Webb threw 97 pitches in six innings, 19 more than San Diego Padres ace Yu Darvish, who had a head start after pitching against the Los Angeles Dodgers in South Korea last week. Webb and Kansas City’s Cole Ragans were the only starting pitchers to throw more than 95 pitches on Opening Day.
This team always will get length out of Webb, but this spring, the rest of the results weren’t there. Webb threw 21 1/3 innings in Arizona and allowed 26 earned runs on 37 hits. He’s been doing this long enough to know that spring results don’t matter for a veteran, but still … sometimes you just want to feel like yourself.
“That was a little bit better than my spring training, that’s for sure,” Webb said Thursday, smiling. “It felt like the ball started moving where it was supposed to and yeah, it felt good. I think the adrenaline kicked in. Spring training is tough because there’s not a whole lot of adrenaline so you can get into patterns of thinking about your mechanics or the way the ball is moving. It was nice today to get out there and get the adrenaline going.
“I don’t think I thought about my mechanics one time. I was just going out there and competing.”
When people around the game talk about the impact that the dry air in Arizona has on pitchers, they generally discuss breaking balls that aren’t as sharp. But Webb has so much movement on his sinker and changeup that he might have been impacted as much as anyone. He noted Thursday that the hard infield at Scottsdale Stadium can also be particularly unforgiving for the league leader in groundball percentage.
