Webb can't do it alone

ARI 7  SF 1

The Giants dropped the final contest in Arizona yesterday and fell back to .500 and three games off the Wild Card pace. There are ten games left and the math is pretty close to impossible. Of course they could always simply “win out” (10-0 the rest of the way!) and shut everyone up but I reckon that’s a bet no one will take. They will now have to compete with the San Diego Padres for third place in the NL West.

Logan Webb got peppered for nine hits in six frames but only one went for extra bases and he kept the game close with another quality start.The Giants had three hits total in another anemic display with LaMonte Wade, Jr.’s solo shot leading off the 1st providing the only run. Webb leads MLB in QS with 23, batters faced with 816, pitches thrown with 3072, and in IP with 207. He’s a “horse” in the old-fashioned sense. His BB/9 (1.35) is 3rd-best, HR/9 (0.87) is 8th-best, FIP (3.21) is 6th-best, and ERA (3.35) is 10th-best. His 61.6% ground-ball rate leads MLB by a lot, the second-best belongs to Framber Valdez (54.3%). You’d figure Webb for a lot of DPs and in fact he’s the best with 28. FanGraphs says he’s 7th-best with 4.6 WAR and Baseball-Reference pegs him 4th with 5.0 WAR. Interestingly, Baseball Prospectus has Webb at #1 (5.0) in their version (called WARP) of this rather abstract metric. He’s a stud, that’s for sure, and is the team MVP by far. We should get to see him pitch two more times before the season wraps up. If the Giants had a better club and Webb had a winning record he would be a serious Cy Young Award candidate. (He’ll get some well-deserved down-ballot votes but I suspect Spencer Strider* will take the NL prize with his ridiculous K-numbers.)

Kyle Harrison gets re-called for tonight’s game in LA (7:10 PT). Let’s hope The Kid can find his footing.

Go Giants!

–M.C.

*Strider leads MLB in a stat called xFIP with 2.89 and, you-guessed-it, Webb is 2nd with a 2.98 mark. xFIP tries to account for the “noise” in home run rates which vary a lot from year-to-year. It is otherwise calculated and scaled just like FIP which tries to separate out the parts of the game pitchers can actually control (BB,SO, HR, HBP). Defense Independent Pitching Stats (DIPS) were developed by a man named Voros McCracken about 25 years ago and the ideas are fundamental to sabermetrics.