Now is the time to root for individual achievement. The Giants are all but out of the playoff hunt, but they’re still on the hook for 31 baseball games, which means fun baseball things will still happen!
Could certain players make a final month’s push to inflate some numbers and pad some stats? Could Jung Hoo Lee reach 40 doubles, or at least nab that next two-bagger to become the second player in the Majors this year to gain membership in the 30+ 2B – 10+ 3B club (Jarren Duran), and become the first
Giant since the inimitable Ángel Pagán to reach both of those extra-base marks? Will Willy Adames keep slugging moonshot longballs to break 30 (he’s at 22 now)? Can Logan Webb finally crack 200 strikeouts in a season…and pair that dominance with the durability of 200 innings pitched?
Webb notched another quality start in San Francisco’s 7-1 win over Milwaukee on Saturday. The right-hander threw 6 innings to give him a Majors leading 166.2 innings pitched over 27 games started. The 5 strikeouts he bagged against a notoriously contact-oriented team to raise his season K total to 180, good for fifth most in the Majors. He passed last season’s strikeout total (172) two starts ago. His 9.7 K/9 rate is the highest of his career, slightly outpacing 2021’s 9.6 when he struck out 158 batters over 148.1 innings in 27 games (and 26 games started).
Forgive me if this article reeks of one massive sports-writers’ jinx (feel free to slam your head into your wooden coffee table to counteract this), but Webb is on track to log 6 more starts over San Francisco’s last 31 games. Barring any unforeseen and unfortunate events, he’ll take the mound for the 33rd time in that final home weekend series against Colorado. It’d be the third consecutive season in which he didn’t miss a start, and he might need every last one to gain access to the 200 – 200 club.
The closest Webb has been to notching both 200 IP – 200 K was in 2023 when tossed 216 innings (33 GS) with 194 strikeouts. His K/9 rate: 8.1. Perhaps surprisingly, checking the strikeout box this season feels more straightforward than the innings pitched. Webb needs just 20 more strike-threes, which comes out to just over 3 per game, or less than half of his 6.7 K per game season average. He’s recorded 3 or less strikeouts in a start only twice so far this season — once against Toronto and once against San Diego (both post-All Star break). On the flip side, Webb has posted double-digit punchout totals in 6 games. He could spread out the K love over this next month, or he could just cruise to 200 by the first week in September. That’d be an emphatic way to notch a career-first, but might be hard considering his next start will be against the Cubs, who have one of the lowest team strikeout totals in the league. That being said, two more starts against the whiff happy Rockies could certainly speed things up in his march towards 200.
Though it might not be as straightforward as the K-total, reaching 200 innings pitched is well within reach for Webb. It’s a workload he’s comfortable handling. He’s eclipsed 200 innings pitched in those past two seasons and has rightfully earned the moniker of “workhorse” for his durability on the mound. Not reaching 200 IP won’t hurt that reputation, but it might sting. He’s still 33.1 innings away, which is not nothing. He could throw three complete games before season’s end and still come up short thanks to some bum starts.
On average, he’ll need to pitch into the 6th inning in each game to get to 200, roughly 5.2 innings on the box score. While wear-and-tear of accumulated innings, the exhaustion of a long season has been known to yank on the reins in September, Webb doesn’t appear to be slowing down. He’s pitched at least 6 complete in his last four starts. He didn’t reach the 6th inning in just 5 games this season. He’s averaging the same innings pitched per outing that he did in 2024 when he ended the season with 204 innings. If he maintains that pace over this final month, slightly more than 6 IP per start, Webb will cross over to the other side of 200 in his last game.
But what is the value of a 200 IP – 200 K season? At this point, nothing. Looking at the past 8 Cy Young Award winners, only two of them (Gerrit Cole in 2023 & Sandy Alcantara in 2022) have had 200-200 seasons — that being said all of them but Justin Verlander in 2022 notched 200+ strikeouts. A pregame meal of bad sushi might take a bite out of Webb’s season’s totals, but it won’t take away from another season defined by quality and durability, nor keep him from getting Cy Young votes for the fourth straight year. A 195 IP – 195 K end would be aesthetically irksome, but that’d be the extent of its real-world consequences.
That being said, these round-number milestones matter to players. Since Webb became a fulltime starter in 2021, only 11 pitchers in the Majors have posted a 200-200 season. Sandy Alcantara, Zach Wheeler and Gerrit Cole have done it twice in that span. The last Giant to do it was Madison Bumgarner in 2019, who had four such seasons, including three consecutive 200-200 seasons during the prime MadBum, snot-rocket era (2014-2016). There’s some random one-offs like Ray Sadecki in 1968 and Jeff Samardzija in 2017, but for the most part, the names that logged 200-200 seasons in a San Francisco Giants uniform is a list of beloved franchise icons. Tim Lincecum threw four in a row. Jason Schmidt went back-to-back in ‘03 and ‘04. Gaylord Perry also logged four across five seasons, while Juan Marichal posted six in seven seasons from ‘63 to ‘69.
The 200 strikeouts mark is Webb’s next step in his ascension of the starting elite. He’s always been an increasingly rare breed when it comes to workload but has maybe been overshadowed by “bigger” arms doing “bigger” things in this high-velocity era. A lot of players nowadays have subscribed to Neil Young’s pitching philosophy: better to burn out than to fade away. Triple-digit heaters, low-90s sliders. Go big, then go to the IL — that’s what’s trending, that’s what the TikTok kids want to see. Who gives a flip about chase-rate on offspeed pitches or groundball-percentages? Seeing Webb’s name in the top-5 of strikeout leaders, considering the highest rung he’s reached on the K-ladder is 19 in 2023, adds more dynamism to his durability. A pretty compelling pairing. Take Webb’s strikeout total and 54% groundball rate, then tack on his MLB leading innings pitched and you’ve got a player doing something pretty special.
