Giants star For the first time in his MLB career, Logan Webb is a finalist for the Cy Young Award, and that in and of itself is reason for celebration.
The 26-year-old pitcher was a bright spot in a mediocre 2023 season for San Francisco, enhancing his reputation as one of the most reliable and efficient starters in the league. But does he stand a chance of winning the Cy Young award?
Many people believe that Blake Snell, who has been leading the San Diego Padres’ rotation this season, is the favorite to win the National League award. Zac Gallen of the Arizona Diamondbacks, another finalist, will provide Webb with fierce competition.
Even though he doesn’t believe it, Webb has a case, of course.
The always humble Webb predicted that “Snell would win the Cy Young award after he pitched the second complete game of his career for the Giants in September. In baseball, he is the best pitcher.”
Webb has been surpassed by Snell in a number of important statistical categories, but the veteran right-hander for the Giants has excelled in many other areas as well. Three reasons exist for Webb to be called up when the Cy Young winners are revealed on Wednesday:
worthy Workhorse
This season, Webb had to contend with something that few MLB pitchers ever encounter: a starting rotation devoid of, well, starters. For the Giants in 2023, Webb’s propensity for long outings was a big factor in the team’s prolonged postseason prospects. He was the epitome of a workhorse for San Francisco.
With a career-high 216 innings pitched over 33 starts this season, Webb became the first pitcher for the Giants to lead the league in innings since Gaylord Perry in 1970. Pitch counts are king in this era, and analytics usually decide mid-to-late game matchups, but Webb’s durability this season is something else entirely.
Webb’s final start of the season was the full game that was previously mentioned. San Francisco fans would have had plenty to cheer about in the postseason if the Giants had not experienced their late-season collapse and had advanced to the postseason.
As one of the Giants’ only reliable starters, Webb maintained his position alongside Alex Cobb and demonstrated why he deserves to remain at the top of the rotation for the foreseeable future.
No Free Passes
Webb entered the season with 194 strikeouts, which is one less than Snell (234) and Gallen (220) combined. His 3.25 earned run average (ERA) placed him fourth among NL starters, one run higher than Snell’s. Cy Young voters will consider these two figures above all others when selecting a candidate, but there is another that is also significant.
The Giants ace walked just 31 batters in 2023, giving him an average of 1.3 walks per nine innings and a 6.26 strikeout-to-walk ratio — both of which led the NL. Additionally, Webb threw strikes 67.8 percent of the time this season and trailed only the Atlanta Braves’ Spencer Strider for the NL lead in that category. Webb’s 1.07 WHIP also tied for the NL’s second-best mark, along with Corbin Burnes of the Milwaukee Brewers and just behind Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw at 1.06.
To put it briefly, pitchers aim for the kind of control that Webb exhibited by limiting the number of baserunners allowed. The most crucial attribute a pitcher can possess is a propensity to throw strikes, especially ones that are hard for the other team to hit. Together with the other numbers we’ve gathered, Webb’s MLB-leading ground-ball percentage of 62.1 percent this season indicates that his command is excellent, possibly leagues above that of his fellow Cy Young finalists.
Face of the Franchise
How should we start? It’s no secret that the Giants struggled in 2023, beginning with the team’s inability to sign a free agent superstar in the previous winter.
But what if the superstar had been present in the clubhouse the entire time? In his fifth MLB season, Webb demonstrated that he was a leader in the clubhouse in addition to being a high performer on the field. There are some things that statistics just cannot measure. The pitcher maintained his composure despite the ups and downs of a perplexing San Francisco season, even though it was occasionally challenging to play that role.
The Giants rarely supported Webb’s stellar outings with their bats this season, producing an MLB-low 3.1 runs of support across his 33 starts and contributing to his 11-13 record. For comparison, Snell (14-9) and Gallen (17-9) received an average of 4.3 and 4.8 runs per start, respectively. But Webb, a team leader, never threw his teammates under the bus and typically put the onus on himself for losses if he gave up any runs.
Webb remarked, “That’s just part of baseball,” following the Giants’ 4-1 defeat by the Cincinnati Reds on August 30. “As a pitcher, all I have to do is go out there and make sure the score stays at zero. I’m mostly to blame for it.”
Webb used his voice for good in situations that seemed anything but, from taking the blame when his Webb Gems went to waste to demanding change when the Giants were losing ground toward the end of the season. He solidified his position as the Giants’ future this past spring by agreeing to a five-year contract extension, and he’ll keep doing that in the future.
We know that Cy Young voters do not take intangibles into account. Though Webb’s chances of winning the award are slim, Giants supporters have seen enough of the young ace to know that he will likely be considered again in the future. Whether or not Webb wins the Cy Young Award, San Francisco has plenty to build around him as they head into another crucial offseason in search of a spark.