SAN DIEGO — As Logan Webb simmered over a frustrating third inning, one where he allowed three runs, he found some much-needed perspective.
On Monday night, Webb witnessed a group of Navy SEALs going through a training exercise in nearby Coronado, a scene he described as “pretty friggin’ intense.” Webb watched as they navigated freezing, contaminated waters. If they messed up, they had to run suicides.
“That thought popped in my head,” Webb said following the Giants’ 9-3 win over the Padres. “I was like, I got it a lot easier than those guys do. Figure it out. I know it’s kind of weird to say, but it’s how I felt. I don’t know. I was kind of sick of pitching how I was pitching.”
Webb, indeed, figured it out and delivered his first quality start of the season, bouncing back from a dud against the New York Yankees on Opening Night. His final line — six innings, three runs, four walks, five strikeouts — wasn’t up to his lofty standards, but with the help of a mechanical tweak, he ended his night by retiring the final 10 batters that he faced.
“That’ll be one of my favorite outings of the year even though you could take a step back and say it was one of the uglier ones, too, at times,” said manager Tony Vitello. “It just showed a lot of guts.”
“That’s why he’s one of the best pitchers in the game,” said shortstop Willy Adames, who tallied four hits and a leadoff homer.
Guts were needed after Webb grinded through a grueling third inning. Webb gifted the Padres a rally by walking Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado, setting the table for San Diego to cut into the Giants’ 4-0 lead. Jackson Merrill drove in Tatis with a single, Xander Bogaerts scored Machado on a groundout, then Miguel Andujar brought home Merrill with his own RBI single.
After escaping the third, Webb silenced San Diego’s offense for the rest of the night. He retired the final 10 batters that he faced, striking out Tatis, Machado and Merrill in the fifth inning.
“I’ll be honest with you: We were at a balancing point there a couple different times,” Vitello said. “You guys have got cameras, so you can see if somebody’s moving around down there. But that’s our guy. I don’t think it had anything to do with where we are in the season or where he’s at in the rotation. He’s as competitive as any guy we have on the roster. I think belief in him was coming from everywhere in the dugout, not just me.”
Guts alone weren’t the reason that Webb was able to deliver six innings and earn his first win of the season.
Beginning in the fifth inning, Webb employed a subtle mechanical adjustment. For the first four innings, Webb pointed his chest and feet at the third-base dugout before going into his delivery. In the fifth and sixth, he had his chest and feet facing directly at home plate.
Here’s Webb in the first:
And here’s Webb in the fifth:
“I’m searching right now, and unfortunately, it wasn’t working,” Webb said. “So, I changed early in the game, and then I was kind of missing. Four walks is not acceptable at all. Then, I kind of went back to my normal windup — I think it was the fifth inning — and felt really good doing it. I don’t know if the changing to the other windup, some tempo stuff. So much going on in my brain right now that I just tried to get some outs, to be honest.”
The right-hander threw 92 pitches to complete his first five innings, but Vitello allowed Webb to go out for the sixth even as his pitch count neared the century mark.
Webb knew that if he didn’t retire the first batter in the sixth, he was likely getting removed from the game. When Webb retired Bogaerts to start the frame, he looked over to the Giants’ dugout. Vitello hadn’t moved a muscle. Following a 1-2-3 inning to end his night, Webb thanked Vitello for trusting him.
“From my perspective, it looked like he was fighting himself a little bit when the game’s already presenting enough of a fight,” Vitello said. “And you know the hitters, especially with the Padres’ lineup, are presenting enough of a fight. So, now you’re picking a third fight with yourself is what it appeared to be. It looked like he kind of just dug down, got pissed, showed his guts and got in the one true fight that he needed to.”
Webb said he’s been trying to figure out his delivery since his last start of spring training, when he allowed six runs over 4 1/3 innings to the Colorado Rockies. The two-time All-Star made two outings for Team USA during the World Baseball Classic but doesn’t believe the preseason tournament threw him off at all.
“I was waiting for that question,” Webb said with a smile. “No, I don’t think so. I signed up for that. It’s what I chose to do. There’s some different travel and different atmospheres that I went through — adrenaline — but if I was tired, hypothetically, it’s my own fault. I feel great right now. It’s not that. Like I said, I think I’m a little off. I’m trying to figure it out as we go. Luckily, it’s a long baseball season.”
Adames thrives in leadoff spot
Adames started a game as a leadoff hitter for just the fourth time in his career on Tuesday and put together a complete offensive performance, totaling four hits, smacking his second career leadoff homer and falling a triple shy of the cycle.
“I think it just set the tone in the right way,” Adames said of his leadoff homer. “There’s not a better way to start a game, in my opinion.”
Adames’ sample size at leadoff is incredibly small, but the numbers certainly pop. In his four starts, Adames is 8-for-15 with two leadoff home runs and three RBIs. Adames hit his other leadoff home run on the final game of the 2025 regular season, which gave him 30 homers on the season and made him the first Giant to reach that mark in a single season since Barry Bonds in 2004.
“He’s always going to be geared up. It’s just his personality,” Vitello said. “He’s got a lot of passion literally oozing out of his pores every day he gets to play baseball. … I do think you have to find a sense of calm, and whatever it is about the last two days, regardless of how he feels, when he comes up, to me, it’s a carry over from day three at Oracle. There’s more of a sense of calm.”