Logan Webb just won National League Pitcher of the Month for June. He held hitters to a .148 average. He threw eight innings in three straight starts. Then Friday night happened.
The Rockies lit him up for 11 hits and seven earned runs over three innings at Coors Field. The final score was 15-3, and the Giants dropped to 36-51 in a season that’s slipping away fast.
First-year manager Tony Vitello didn’t sugarcoat it afterward. When MLB.com asked what he saw from his ace, Vitello was blunt.
“Just big misses,” he said. “I mean, the ball can do different things here than the average park, but coming out of the shoot, first pitch of the game, it looked to me like it kind of ran down and in to the left, he’s supposed to go the other way, and just some big misses.”
Vitello pulled Webb after 76 pitches. The game was already out of reach, and there was no point running up his pitch count. The manager said he’s thinking about keeping Webb fresh for his next start, which is the sensible move when you’re down 10-plus runs in the third inning.
Coors Field gets blamed for a lot of weird pitching lines. The ball carries differently. Movement gets funky. But Vitello wasn’t leaning on that excuse. He pointed directly at Webb missing his spots, especially in that first inning when the trouble started.
Here’s the thing about Webb. He’s 29, he throws hard, and he’s the anchor of this rotation. When he’s off, the Giants have no safety net. San Francisco’s rotation depth has been an issue all year, and nights like Friday just magnify it.
The Giants need their guy to reset fast. They’ve got a long second half ahead, and if Webb can’t bounce back from this one, the rotation is in real trouble. Vitello said the plan is to keep him fresh.
Webb will get the ball again in five or six days. What he does with it will tell us a lot about whether this was just a bad night or something more.
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