Heliot Ramos had something to prove in his return to the starting line-up in D.C.. Pretty early on in this young season, imposter syndrome appeared to have set in. The first left fielder to start in back-to-back Opening Days for the Giants in nearly 20 years had been playing as if he was just another place-holder at the position. The hard-hitting, broad-shouldered Ramos had scratched just two extra base hits in 60-plus at-bats with a meager .527 OPS.
All the smack and pow typical to the balls he puts
in play were gone, replaced with new, squelchier onomatopoeias like fliizzzz and flump and whiffff. Going into Friday’s game, Ramos was missing and chasing pitches more than ever, and the ball, when he made contact with it, was coming off the bat flatter than ever. His average swing speed, once clocked at 75.2 MPH in 2024, had so far slowed to 71.2 MPH. The batter’s box had become a theater of discomfort and discontent for Ramos. Things had gotten bad enough for manager Tony Vitello to relegate him to a platoon role in the last two games in Cincinnati.
While he still got some playing time as bat off the bench, the forced respite gave Ramos some time to splash some water on your face, to wake-up, to re-focus. I imagine one night he went out onto the muddy banks overlooking the Ohio, stared up in the night sky and saw the bald-headed bust of Barry Bonds gathering in the clouds. His voice — higher in pitch than James Earl Jones, but just as memorable — booming from the heavens, reminded Ramos to remember who you are…
Barry’s voice echoed in Ramos’s ears as he dug back into the box in the 2nd inning of Friday’s game. With runners at the corners and nobody out, the Giants had an opportunity to claim an early lead against starter Zach Littell, yet Ramos found himself quickly in a familiar 2-strike hole after failing to square-up or elevate two hanging sliders. An unproductive out felt imminent…but then Barry spoke. Ramos listened. A flubbed splitter approached, and Ramos stayed patient and contained…then barrelled it. The baseball burst from his bat at 107 MPH and disappeared over the wall in dead-center 406 feet away for — finally — his first home run of the year.
The kid was understandably jazzed. He pounded his chest and shouted into the visitor’s dugout as he cantered around third. At that moment, Ramos’s swing opened up an offensive valve. The Giants had managed to score just seven runs in hitter-happy Cincy — but three runs with one swing? That was allowed?? What had been a drip became a torrent. Three more batters reached safely after Ramos’s homer. Drew Gilbert actually worked a walk. With two outs and runners at second and third, Matt Chapman punched a 2-out, 2-RBI single to left. Rafael Devers added on with a line drive that beat James Wood to the wall in right for an RBI double. By the time the top of the 2nd was over, San Francisco’s line-up had batted around, plating a season-high six runs on seven hits and a base-on-balls.
The frame came off like a fever dream. While those initial six runs would’ve been enough to float the Giants in the win, that 2nd inning rally happened so fast one couldn’t trust it. The lead hardly felt secure, because is anything secure in the hands of these 2026 Giants? Yeah, Logan Webb was on the mound…but this was 2026 Logan Webb. Nothing felt right, or reliable, or comfortable. Six runs against a young and intimidating Washington line-up that averaged roughly six runs a game felt like being given an air mattress to crash on at your in-laws house. Chances are that thing hasn’t been used since the Bush administration. Chances are the self-inflation feature doesn’t work. Chances are there’s a hole somewhere where a mouse chewed through the plastic. If one was going to get through to the morning, multiple middle-of-the-night re-inflations would probably be required — and even then, you still might wake up back flat on the hard floor.
And yet, against all odds, the Giants offense kept the mattress inflated.
Washington added two runs here and one there as the innings progressed, taking nibbles out of the initial lead, but San Francisco’s bats refused to stay stagnant. They couldn’t rest on their laurels because their laurels were a dusty rectangle of polyvinyl chloride they found folded up in the back of a closet. They had already been so sufficiently humbled in these first twenty games that twenty runs wouldn’t have felt safe as a lead. Vigilance was required, and vigilance was provided with Drew Gilbert’s first home run of the year to lead off the 4th. Willy Adames kept the pressure on with his 10th double of the year, and Matt Chapman brought him home on his second of three singles. In the 7th, Casey Schmitt socked his second homer of the year over the wall in left and third on the night for a line-up that had entered the game with just 9 long balls to their name, the lowest HR-total in the Majors.
And to bookend the scoring, pushing San Francisco’s run total into double-digits and out of slam-range, Heliot Ramos worked a bases-loaded walk in the 9th.
In a 3-2 count, he spat on a sweeper well-below his knees and, as he is known to do, sent his bat cartwheeling behind him in celebration. It’s not hard to imagine that version of Ramos back in Cincy swinging out of his shoes at the offering. Power numbers have been, and still are, a concern for this line-up, but the lack of walks was a greater worry. You need to walk before you can (home) run. Hitting is about rhythm and flow. It’s about knowing when to attack and when to be patient. Hitters do not control the ball that is thrown at them — they have to take what is given. This essential tenet of the batter’s box has been somewhat lost on this team. The Giants’ walk-rate as a whole is at the bottom of the league-barrel (5.7% as of Saturday morning), and Ramos’s individual BB% is below even that. They have spent the season so far forcing the issue, leading to a lot of contact, but also a lot of quick outs.
In that context, the back-to-back base-on-balls by Jung Hoo Lee and Ramos in the 9th felt miraculous.
The home run cut in the 2nd, the 3-2 take in the 9th — TBD whether these moments prove to be catalysts for Heliot Ramos’s season going forward. But right now, we can celebrate that they were catalysts in this win.
And were there any such moments for Logan Webb on the mound?
These first five starts have been nothing short of frustrating, and I’d say the overall tone of Webb’s demeanor against the Nationals showed more of the same.
Washington’s lefty heavy order refused to let him pitch the way he wanted to pitch. They didn’t chase his change-up out of the zone, and forced Webb into a mix that highlighted his sweeper. He didn’t boast as much count leverage as he typically does, and while Webb lives at the knees, Washington hitters pounded offerings there. They socked 14 hard-hit balls off Webb. Daylen Lile rocketed a low sinker 418 feet for a 2-run shot in the 4th. Number-8 hitter Jose Tena went 3-for-3 including a 2-strike, 2-out RBI single in the 6th that robbed Webb of the chance at a quality start.
Webb’s Mar/April splits so far have been some of the worst of his career, as are his splits against lefties. He hasn’t been sharp, but it’s fair to say his defense hasn’t been sharp behind him either. And this hasn’t been from Luis Arraez either — who was absolutely balletic and joyous with his glove last night. According to early defensive metrics, Arraez has been the star of this infield, while continuing nonsense from third, short, and first base have drawn ire and even gone viral.
With runners at the corners and nobody out in the 3rd, Webb froze human-tree James Wood with a perfectly located 3-2 sinker for an unproductive out. He then immediately induced what should’ve been an inning-ending double play ball to second. The feed from Arraez to Adames was fine, but somehow the ball, after nestling itself fully in the pocket of Devers’s glove, just popped out. The throw was high and rising. It wasn’t great, nor was Devers’s footwork. He committed to his stretch from the bag too early, when he arguably had time to stand taller and receive the throw using the base as a platform. That’s on Devers…but Adames is not blameless either. He’s got to feed the fledgling first baseman better. This has been a recurring problem since Opening Day. An inning later, Adames make another great stop up, but his relay was again wide, allowing Joey Weimer to reach and eventually come around to score on Lile’s 2-run shot. Matt Chapman committed another throwing error (his fourth) later in the 7th, offering the Nationals’ offense an extra out (a gift they promptly rejected when Curtis Mead lined out to Chapman, who then doubled-up Brady House at first).
Two of Webb’s four earned runs on the night could’ve been avoided if the defense provided better support, and grounders were converted into outs. The downstream effect here too is these miscues keep Webb from finding his footing. These errors are frustrations that fester rather than heal. And getting that double play in the 3rd would’ve been really healing. Instead of walking off the mound with swagger having Houdini-ed out of a jam, Webb kicked stones back to the dugout a dozen stressful pitches later righteously steamed.
I wonder too if Webb was a little ticked off from the get-go about Daniel Susac starting behind the dish rather than Patrick Bailey. I get that Susac’s all-around play has earned him more starts (he recorded two hits again in this game), but if I’m Tony Vitello, I don’t tinker when my ace starts. There’s some wisdom in keeping certain things you can control consistent, especially since Webb isn’t getting consistency from certain things out of his control.
Alas, not all problems could be solved in one game. And a win is a win, and the Giants needed one, and they needed one in this way real bad.
