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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Logan Webb has become one of the most decorated pitchers in the Giants’ West Coast history, but something’s missing.
“I’m tired of finishing around 500,” said Webb, the longest tenured Giant. “I know fans are tired of it. None of us are happy about it, either. I’ve been here the longest now, and it’s frustrating.”
Ownership brought in Buster Posey as president of baseball operations to turn the Giants into a winner, and Posey hired Tony Vitello as manager for the same reason. One postseason appearance in nine years equates to the team’s worst stretch since the 1990s, the final decade at Candlestick Park.
Webb has done his best to put the Giants over the top, albeit to no avail – he was an All-Star the past two seasons, led the league in innings three years in a row, was the strikeout leader in 2025, finished second, sixth, and fourth in Cy Young Award voting the past three years, and is a reigning Gold Glove winner.
Hungry for more, he wants to live the postseason life sooner rather than later. Some of his best work and fondest memories came the one time since 2016 the Giants reached the postseason. He was dominant in the 2021 Division Series against the Dodgers, surrendering one run in 14 ⅔ innings over two starts.
“You’ve got to put yourself in a position to try to make the playoffs,” Webb said at his Scottsdale Stadium locker this week. “Anytime you go into a season, you should try to win the division, the No. 1 goal. I’m not dumb or anything. I understand the Dodgers are in our division, but I think if our goal wasn’t to try and beat those guys in the division, we’d be chasing the wrong things.”
Webb has the ultimate trust in Posey, his former teammate. In fact, Webb is the only Giant remaining from Posey’s final season as a player, 2021, which showcases the dramatic turnover in recent years.
Webb’s take on Vitello?
“Look, I don’t think Tony’s scared of anything,” he said.
1 day ago
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Saturday, Feb. 7
Webb dropped a Curt Cignetti reference, citing his immediate success as the Indiana football coach, winning the national championship in his second year. As Webb recalled, Cignetti was asked in a pregame interview about Indiana never winning at Penn State, and he famously responded, “This team has never played here.”
In other words, Cignetti’s Hoosiers. Webb’s point is that Vitello’s Giants needn’t be linked to the recent mediocre past because this is a different team and hopefully, in Webb’s mind, the start of a triumphant era.
“This team, the team we have here, the coaching staff, all the guys in here, we’ve never played a season together,” Webb said. “It’s the first week of spring training, and if you’re not chasing all the right things, like winning the division and trying to win the World Series, you’re doing yourself a disservice.”
Webb compared Giants manager Tony Vitello to Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti. | Source: Ash Ponders for The Standard
Webb is the leader of a rotation that includes Robbie Ray, Landen Roupp, Adrian Houser, and Tyler Mahle, plus a host of young starters providing depth. In the offseason, Posey signed Houser, Mahle, center fielder Harrison Bader, and second baseman Luis Arráez.
It wasn’t the grandest or priciest haul of all time, but holes were filled by veterans, and Posey vouched for them all. Despite the early projections, including from PECOTA, of another .500 season, the hope is that the newcomers successfully blend in with the stars already aboard: Rafael Devers, Willy Adames, Matt Chapman, Jung Hoo Lee, and, of course, Webb, who’s now in company with some of the Giants’ elite pitchers of the past.
Albeit without the rings.
When Tim Lincecum was in his prime, I asked him which statistic he valued the most. He said WHIP, which made sense – walks and hits over innings pitched. A WHIP anywhere close to 1.00 is tremendous, an average of just one baserunner per inning, and Lincecum was right around there in both of his Cy Young Award seasons.
This week, I asked Webb the same question.
“Guys like Timmy, WHIP was kind of his thing, right?” Webb said. “He’s not walking a ton of guys and doesn’t give up hits. I’m not necessarily one of those guys. I’m going to give up the singles through the holes, so WHIP’s kind of tough for me.
“My favorite stat? Probably FIP.”
Indeed, fielding independent pitching is a run-prevention stat that best typifies Webb and shows how he favorably compares with premier Giants pitchers of the past. FIP measures a pitcher based only on outcomes he can control: walks, strikeouts, hit-by-pitches, and home runs. It can be a more accurate indicator of a pitcher’s value than ERA because it removes results from balls in play, which can be influenced by the defense or pure luck.
“What we’re trying to do, and it’s always been ingrained in me, is limit damage,” Webb said. “I might give up singles, but I’m not [generally] giving up home runs and doubles. Or walking a lot of people. That’s what Madison [Bumgarner] stressed. You try to walk the least amount of guys and limit damage, and that’s FIP.”
How good is Webb’s FIP? It’s 3.02 over his seven seasons, which ranks first among all Giants starters since the team moved west in 1958. That counts Hall of Famers Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry and all the stars from the championship era.
It’s a who’s who list: Webb, Bumgarner (3.32), Jason Schmidt (3.34), Lincecum (3.36), Perry (3.54), Marichal (3.68), Billy Swift (3.71), and John Montefusco (3.73).
You get the point. Webb is that good. His FIP ranked fourth in the majors last season and lowest in the game over the past four years.
Prefer ERA? Only three big-league pitchers have better ERAs since 2022, and Webb has the second-lowest ERA in Oracle Park’s 26-year history, trailing only Bumgarner.
But again, something’s missing. Webb wants a Cy Young Award. More than that, he wants a regular dose of playoff baseball in San Francisco. If that becomes a reality, Webb likely will be leading the charge, as he was in 2021 when winning the regular-season finale and beating the Dodgers 4-0 in the playoff opener. In Game 5, he handed a 1-1 game to the bullpen only to watch Camilo Doval give up a tie-breaking single to Cody Bellinger in the ninth.
“We weren’t favored in ’21, either,” Webb said when asked about the Giants’ so-so projections for 2026. “We won the division when no one believed in us. Obviously, we didn’t win the World Series, which sucks, but the No. 1 goal every year should be to win the division. We took it to the last day and won it. It was amazing.”