dud against the New York Yankees<\/a> on Opening Night. His final line \u2014 six innings, three runs, four walks, five strikeouts \u2014 wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\u201cThat\u2019ll 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,\u201d said manager Tony Vitello. \u201cIt just showed a lot of guts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why he\u2019s one of the best pitchers in the game,\u201d said shortstop Willy Adames, who tallied four hits and a leadoff homer.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
After escaping the third, Webb silenced San Diego\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you: We were at a balancing point there a couple different times,\u201d Vitello said. \u201cYou guys have got cameras, so you can see if somebody\u2019s moving around down there. But that\u2019s our guy. I don\u2019t think it had anything to do with where we are in the season or where he\u2019s at in the rotation. He\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guts alone weren\u2019t the reason that Webb was able to deliver six innings and earn his first win of the season.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s Webb in the first:<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s Webb in the fifth:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m searching right now, and unfortunately, it wasn\u2019t working,\u201d Webb said. \u201cSo, 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 \u2014 I think it was the fifth inning \u2014 and felt really good doing it. I don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Webb knew that if he didn\u2019t 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\u2019 dugout. Vitello hadn\u2019t moved a muscle. Following a 1-2-3 inning to end his night, Webb thanked Vitello for trusting him.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom my perspective, it looked like he was fighting himself a little bit when the game\u2019s already presenting enough of a fight,\u201d Vitello said. \u201cAnd you know the hitters, especially with the Padres\u2019 lineup, are presenting enough of a fight. So, now you\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Webb said he\u2019s 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\u2019t believe the preseason tournament threw him off at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was waiting for that question,\u201d Webb said with a smile. \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so. I signed up for that. It\u2019s what I chose to do. There\u2019s some different travel and different atmospheres that I went through \u2014 adrenaline \u2014 but if I was tired, hypothetically, it\u2019s my own fault. I feel great right now. It\u2019s not that. Like I said, I think I\u2019m a little off. I\u2019m trying to figure it out as we go. Luckily, it\u2019s a long baseball season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adames thrives in leadoff spot<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it just set the tone in the right way,\u201d Adames said of his leadoff homer. \u201cThere\u2019s not a better way to start a game, in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adames\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s always going to be geared up. It\u2019s just his personality,\u201d Vitello said. \u201cHe\u2019s got a lot of passion literally oozing out of his pores every day he gets to play baseball. \u2026 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\u2019s a carry over from day three at Oracle. There\u2019s more of a sense of calm.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO \u2014 As Logan Webb simmered over a frustrating third inning, one where he allowed three runs,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,4,43,137,18,66,4339,4338,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-656914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego-padres","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-padres","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-san-diego-padres","13":"tag-san-francisco-giants","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-sandiegopadres","16":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116330288835969564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}