SAN FRANCISCO — With a smack of his glove and swift stride back to the dugout, Logan Webb celebrated a new career milestone.
The Giants ace wasn’t his most efficient, nor his most effective, against the Diamondbacks on Monday night. But, like he has all season, Webb reached into his back pocket and found a weapon when he needed it most.
Four runs were already on his pitching line and a potential fifth was standing on third with two outs in the fifth, as Arizona’s No. 5 hitter, Adrian Del Castillo, stepped into the box. The count ran full, and Webb fired a changeup on the outside corner that darted away from the left-handed batter.
Castillo offered and came up empty. Strike three, the 200th of the season for the ground-ball savant turned strikeout artist. A congratulatory message flashed across the jumbotron, the 26,699 on hand rose to their feet and Webb made his way off the mound, hardly acknowledging the feat.
Webb added one more punchout to finish with seven, requiring 110 pitches to complete six innings, and earned the win in an 11-5 trouncing to open their series against Arizona. Paired with the Mets’ 1-0 loss to the Phillies, it pulled the Giants (73-71) within three games of the final wild card spot.
Webb walked off the mound as the National League leader in strikeouts — 201 total — and the first Giants pitcher to reach the round number since Carlos Rodón did it in 2022. By the end of the month, he will all but certainly become the first in the franchise since Madison Bumgarner to do so while also pitching 200 innings.
When he walked off the mound, Webb wasn’t in line for the win. But that changed in a hurry, as the Giants loaded the bases to begin the bottom of the sixth and hung a five-spot on the scoreboard by the time it was over, handing a commanding lead over to the bullpen.
Christian Koss doubled in a pair, and Heliot Ramos put an exclamation point on the rally with a 435-foot tank that landed midway up the bleachers in left-center field. Ramos’ homer, his 17th of the season, was the Giants’ third of the game, adding on to a pair of souvenirs Jung Hoo Lee and Dominic Smith provided to fans atop the arcade in right field.
Lee, in the second, and Smith, in the third, answered for Arizona’s runs in the top half of each inning, before the Giants broke it open in the sixth. Matt Chapman added on with a solo shot in the seventh, and Patrick Bailey joined the power party in the eighth.
The Giants’ five home runs set a season-high, their most in one game since an 11-0 win last September — also against Arizona.
Webb breezed through the first inning on nine pitches but needed 31 to complete the second, issuing a pair of walks that both came around to score after Christian Koss flubbed a hard chopper up the middle that would have been the third out. Arizona added another two-out run after Webb allowed a leadoff single to Ketel Marte to start the third and couldn’t put away Blaze Alexander, who snuck a nubber past a diving Smith at first base with two down.
The occasional piece of soft contact sneaking through the infield is a built-in part of Webb’s game as a sinkerballer who coaxes ground balls at one of the highest rates in the league. The ability to turn to the strikeout to recover from those is a new wrinkle Webb added this season.
Previously, the most batters Webb had fanned in a season was 194 in 2023, but those came in a major-league-leading 216 innings. He was sitting on that number entering his start Monday night, at only 178⅔ innings. He has shouldered the majors’ largest workload each of the past two seasons and is doing so again this year, at a league-leading 184⅔ frames, but now finds himself atop a new leaderboard.
“(He’s) getting better, pitch-mix wise,” manager Bob Melvin marveled before the game. “Look at how his pitches work now, all the different ones, that’s why you’re seeing all these strikeouts now. … That really wasn’t him before. Now, he can get strikeouts when he needs to, ground balls when he needs to. He’s just a better pitcher now and continues to get better.”