WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Matt Cain, throughout his long tenure as a load-bearing pillar in the San Francisco Giants rotation, adhered to a personal code whenever he’d hand over the baseball at the end of a day’s work.
No matter how well he pitched at the Giants’ waterfront ballpark, no matter how few runs scored on his watch, no matter how comfortably the home team was ahead and no matter how loudly the crowd cheered his effort, the stoic right-hander refused to tip his cap if he left a runner on base. Something about it just didn’t feel right.
Logan Webb has a little Matt Cain in him.
“I wish I had given a wave or something,” said Webb, who walked off the mound with two on and two out in the seventh inning at Sutter Health Park on Saturday night to the kind of ovation reserved for hometown heroes. “It’s always awkward in those moments, and I don’t know why. But I felt the love from the Sacramento crowd. It was awesome to pitch at home.”
Because their Las Vegas-bound former Bay Area rivals are carpetbagging it in the Central Valley for at least three seasons, the Giants are playing a major-league series in a minor-league stadium. It happens to be the Triple-A ballpark down the road from where Webb grew up in Rocklin. He fidgeted in his seat here many times as a kid, watching the Sacramento River Cats when they were still an A’s affiliate.
Maybe something happens when so many of your formative memories of professional baseball come in a ballpark that doesn’t have a second deck and where every seat is close to the action. Maybe there’s less emotional distance between you and the players. It might be one of the reasons Webb has remained so grounded and so rocksteady since he established himself as one of the league’s best pitchers in 2021. You can’t injure yourself by falling off a pedestal when you never put yourself on one.
Webb delivered another of his typical starts on an otherwise atypical night. He pumped strikes and mixed his pitches; a Giants lineup that included a freshly activated Matt Chapman and a resurgent Willy Adames did the rest in a 7-2 victory.
The crowd salutes its hometown hero. (Darren Yamashita / Imagn Images)
The legions of Giants fans who barely had a moment to cheer here in Friday night’s 11-2 loss came out of the auditory woodwork this time. But the sellout crowd of 12,298 could be better described as pro-Webb than pro-Giants. The moment Webb walked out of the bullpen in the bottom of the first inning, he was showered with shouts of “Go Rocklin” and “Go Thunder” from fans who more than likely once applauded the touchdown drives he directed in high school.
Webb’s cheering section for home games in San Francisco is so vocal that his coaches would tease him about it. So you knew his loyalists would be out in full force when he started a game in his own backyard. You can’t call it a cheering section when the support stretches from pole to pole.
“Every time I got an out or a strikeout, it felt like the whole crowd was cheering me on,” Webb said.
Webb continues to raise his own high bar in what’s turning into the best season of his career. He reclaimed the major-league lead with 120 1/3 innings, and his 133 strikeouts are second only to Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler among National League pitchers. Giants manager Bob Melvin referred to Webb as a no-brainer to make his second NL All-Star team.
He completed at least six innings for the eighth consecutive start and continues to be a stabilizing force every time he takes the mound. That’s precisely what the Giants needed one night after Melvin questioned the team’s focus in a sloppy loss.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Giants played several of those unfocused games over the past four weeks without Chapman, who sustained a significantly sprained hand while getting picked off a month ago. The team was missing more than its leading home run hitter and Gold Glove third baseman. Chapman is also Melvin’s conduit to the clubhouse and the unofficial captain who sets high standards for his teammates.
“That’s what he’s been about his whole career,” said Melvin, who also managed Chapman with the A’s in Oakland. “From the minute he’s gotten here, he embraces the leadership role. He plays a certain style of baseball that we want to play. So it’s huge to have him back and not just the production part. It’s what he does on the field, it’s his presence in the dugout, in the clubhouse. It’s a big part of who we are.”
The Giants’ lineup without Chapman lacked continuity, as well. Even after the stunning June 15 trade with the Boston Red Sox that netted Rafael Devers, one of the best left-handed hitters in the game, the lineup over the past couple of weeks competed like a group that had dressed itself in the dark. The expectation now is that with Devers and Chapman in the middle of the order, and Casey Schmitt expected to become the everyday second baseman Monday when he’s eligible to be activated from the injured list, a deeper and more stable lineup will be able to win its share of games without requiring near perfection from a rotation firmly led by Webb and Robbie Ray and a bullpen that has been baseball’s best in the first half.
“I’d like to think I can make an impact,” Chapman said before the game. “Finally, we get to play together (with Devers). We’re one step closer to everybody being together and getting comfortable playing with each other and to start playing the baseball that we expect to play.”
But there’s no thinking more wishful than “everybody being together” when you’re dealing with a 26-man roster and a 162-game season. The next injury or inconsistent stretch is always right around the corner. Not an hour passed after Chapman’s pregame session with reporters before there was a roster update: left-hander Erik Miller to the injured list with a left elbow sprain.
The news wasn’t too surprising. Something seemed off with Miller most of the year. There had to be occult forces behind his 1.50 ERA in 36 games because Miller totaled more walks and hit batters (22) than strikeouts (20) in 30 innings. His 14 percent drop in strikeout percentage is the largest year-over-year decrease among all major-league pitchers who’ve thrown at least 20 innings. Yet Miller remained an important part of the Giants’ late-inning mix, and he was a huge key to Wednesday’s win at Arizona when he entered Landen Roupp’s bases-loaded, no-out situation and limited the damage to one run on a sacrifice fly.
A sprained elbow is often a precursor to Tommy John surgery, but Melvin said Miller’s MRI did not show major structural damage, and the hope is that he will recover with a rest interval. For now, the Giants selected the contract of a familiar face, left-hander Scott Alexander, whom they recently signed on a minor-league deal, to replace Miller on the roster. Joey Lucchesi is another lefty in the bullpen, but his role for as long as he’s here is to pitch multiple innings. Former Detroit Tigers lefty Matt Gage signed a minor-league contract with the Giants on Saturday. Triple-A left-handed starter Carson Whisenhunt could be introduced to the big leagues in a relief role, too.
The trade deadline is more than three weeks away, and a team’s needs tend to fluctuate, but left-handed relief almost certainly has sped to the top of club president Buster Posey’s list.
If only the Giants could clone Randy Rodriguez, who replaced Webb and stranded both inherited runners. Rodriguez is unscored upon in 36 of 38 appearances and is the Giants’ top All-Star candidate after Webb and Ray. An argument could be made that, given his standing among his relief cohort, Rodriguez is the most deserving Giant on the team.
“The numbers say he’s been the best reliever in baseball,” said Webb, who also lobbied for Tyler Rogers to become a first-time All-Star after several seasons in which he merited a place. “I really hope he gets it.”
The Giants will play two formidable opponents in the final homestand before the All-Star break when the Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers come to San Francisco, but there is still a chance to create the momentum they couldn’t gather while struggling with their demons in the past several series against sub-.500 teams. Adames hasn’t been out of action like Chapman, but his bat hasn’t made an impact for most of the season. It’s starting to heat up now. He hit a pair of two-run singles Saturday, including a crisp line drive in the first inning after A’s right-hander Luis Severino hit Heliot Ramos and Chapman with pitches.
Both hit batters glared back at the mound. Ramos has been hit 11 times this year after getting hit just twice last season. Chapman didn’t appear to appreciate getting plunked in his first plate appearance after missing a month with a hand injury. A week ago, Webb expressed exasperation with the number of Giants batters getting hit and levied a not-so-veiled threat when he said that “the game finds a way to even itself out.”
Webb couldn’t risk getting ejected Saturday night and didn’t hit any batters in retaliation. But it sure was interesting that he made two kneecap pitches in the fourth inning — a 1-0 sinker to Jacob Wilson and an 0-1 sinker to Brent Rooker — that missed their spots by a lot more than his usual location mistakes.
It was one more reminder: Some of Webb’s most fervent fans never have to buy a ticket to see him pitch. They can watch from the dugout for free.
(Top photo: Darren Yamashita / Imagn Images)
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