Let me be the primary to congratulate Logan Webb on his third-place NL Cy Younger end. It’s properly deserved.
Proper now, the award is Paul Skenes’ to lose, and it’s simple to see why. He’s large, he throws laborious, he’s well-known, and whereas he’s come again to Earth somewhat previously three weeks, he genuinely hasn’t had a really unhealthy begin since highschool, if ever. Typically, enjoying for a last-place, small-market workforce is unhealthy for one’s award possibilities, but when something, the Pirates’ canine crap season has solely perversely burnished Skenes’ popularity. He’d be an enormous fish in any pond, however my God, does he stand out right here.
Imagine it or not, there are two NL starters who got here out of the weekend inside half a win of Skenes on the WAR leaderboard: Webb and Philadelphia’s Cristopher Sánchez. The changeup is again, child!
Sánchez goes to complete among the many larger Cy Younger runners-up as a result of that seems to be within the guidelines. Over the previous seven seasons, we’ve had 5 situations of a Phillies starter ending between second and fourth in Cy Younger voting (Zack Wheeler 3 times, Aaron Nola twice), however the workforce hasn’t had a Cy Younger winner since Roy Halladay in 2010. With Wheeler affected by a blood clot in his shoulder and Nola struggling simply typically, Sánchez is the following man up.
Webb is himself no stranger to the Cy Younger podium, having completed second to Blake Snell in 2023, and I fear that he’s beginning to slide out of public consideration somewhat.
Webb is at the moment in his fifth consecutive season of posting 4.1 WAR or higher. He made his final begin — an beautiful outing of seven scoreless innings with seven strikeouts, three hits, and no walks — on Sunday. That introduced him to 4.3 WAR over 26 begins. That determine is tied for the league lead, and his 160 2/3 innings is first in baseball as properly. If Webb makes one other seven begins and continues his present stage of efficiency, he’ll finish the season with 5.5 WAR, which might be a profession excessive.
I believe Webb is underrated not regardless of his consistency, however due to it. As a lot as baseball folks are likely to skew small-c conservative of their resistance to vary, Webb is a throwback, and each shred of proof we now have means that the folks don’t need an indestructible sinkerballer. They need Skenes, or Spencer Strider, or Jacob Misiorowski, the supernova who’s understood simply in GIFs or miles an hour.
Throw quick, retire younger, depart behind lovely UCL remnants. That’s not Webb’s sport, and it by no means can be. However he’s as relentlessly reliable as a forged iron skillet. Webb has thrown at the very least 4 innings each time he’s taken the mound relationship again to April 30 of final season, a run of 52 consecutive begins. He has made it by way of six innings in 19 of his 26 begins this yr; solely Seattle’s Bryan Woo has made extra six-inning begins.
Sadly for Webb (or not; I don’t know whether or not a scarcity of notoriety bothers him in any respect), the Giants haven’t put him within the highlight very a lot. The Giants have neither been unhealthy sufficient to place Webb into Tungsten Arm O’Doylesville, nor ok to put Webb below the postseason highlight.
That’s solely occurred as soon as, in 2021, Webb’s first full season within the majors. And let’s not overlook what occurred then: The Giants may’ve misplaced a five-game heavyweight struggle to the Dodgers, however that was not Webb’s fault. He made two begins, taking a win and a no-decision, with what’s for my cash essentially the most dominant single-series postseason pitching efficiency of the 2020s thus far:
The Dodgers scored one run off Webb in 14 2/3 innings, they usually solely bought that a lot as a result of Corey Seager was in a position to hit an opposite-field bloop double off a pitch that was six inches off the skin nook.
The foundations of Webb’s sport have modified comparatively little since then. He’s been largely sinker/changeup/sweeper his entire profession. The primary two pitches have a really jarring quantity of sink, which has turned him right into a groundball machine.
Out of 397 pitches who’ve allowed 500 balls in play since 2021, Webb is fifteenth within the share of batted balls that Baseball Savant codes as “topped.” He’s eleventh in groundball fee. You’ll be able to hit the ball laborious off him, however more often than not it’s going straight into the dust. Out of all the person pitcher/pitch kind combos which were put in play over the previous 5 years, Webb’s sinker and changeup are each within the 96th percentile for lowest common launch angle.
This yr, Webb has made just a few slight tweaks to his pitch combine, and to be trustworthy, I don’t know if I believe it’s made him a greater or worse pitcher. It has, sadly, made him ever-so-slightly much less uncommon.
These modifications largely mirror how Webb is pitching left-handed hitters. Webb isn’t a type of pitchers who has a unique repertoire for both sides of the plate; he throws a ton of right-on-right changeups, and whereas he makes use of his four-seamer and cutter extra to lefties than righties, these are tertiary pitches no matter who’s on the plate. For essentially the most half, he’ll throw something to anybody.
However in 2025, he’s thrown extra cutters (13.5%, up from 5.0%) and sweepers (24.3%, up from 15.4%) to lefties than in 2024. Which is backwards, isn’t it? These are pitches with glove-side motion, and standard knowledge says these needs to be thrown to same-handed batters.
He’s additionally throwing extra of each pitch, besides the changeup, within the zone to left-handed hitters:
It’s good to throw strikes, I believe you’ll discover. And certainly, whereas Webb didn’t precisely battle in opposition to left-handed opposition in 2024, he did stroll 8.3% of the lefties he confronted, in comparison with 3.4% of righties. This yr, his stroll fee splits are 5.2% and 5.3%, respectively.
However the two pitches he’s throwing extra usually to lefties, each typically and within the zone, are getting completely wrecked. Lefties are hitting .315 with a .456 SLG in opposition to Webb’s sweeper, and .474 with a .684 SLG in opposition to his cutter. Each different mixture of pitch kind and batter handedness produces an opponent wOBA of .340 or decrease, besides these two.
How does throwing his two worst pitches extra make Webb extra conventional? As a result of he’s getting extra swings and misses. You wouldn’t know Webb is on observe for a career-best WAR by taking a look at his ERA, however his FIP is right down to a minuscule 2.56. That’s the third-best mark for any certified starter, trailing solely Tarik Skubal and Skenes, the latter by simply 4 hundredths of a run.
Take into consideration what goes into FIP; Webb has dropped his stroll fee to five.3%, which is within the high 10 in baseball and the second-lowest mark of his profession. On the identical time, he’s elevated his strikeout fee to 26.3%, up from simply 20.5% final yr. And since the whole lot he throws has extra sink than an early Towards Me! anthem, Webb is often among the many pitchers with the bottom dwelling run charges within the league.
Except 2023, Webb has run noticeable however not particularly extreme platoon splits, so it’s comprehensible that he’d wish to do one thing to curb that relative weak point. But it surely’s not working. Most of Webb’s features in strikeout fee are literally coming in opposition to right-handed hitters. He’s ever so barely titled the axis of his changeup to offer it extra drop and fewer run, and he’s properly and really burying it as a chase pitch.
That’s led to an enormous rise in his whiff fee. Righties whiffed 18.5% of the time in opposition to the change final yr, however this yr that determine has risen to 38.5%. A relative weak point (.338 opponent wOBA) has became a killer out pitch (.197 wOBA).
However throwing his two worst pitches extra usually has simply made Webb extra hittable for lefties, who’re batting .287 off the Giants’ ace this season. It looks like a nasty thought.
Again to the unique level: Webb is having a completely stellar yr. He’s been probably the greatest and most constant pitchers within the NL regardless of toying round with changes which were evidently self-defeating. No matter left-handed hitters do to Webb’s sweeper, it’s his third-best pitch, tops. Even with out it clicking, he’s within the high three within the NL in WAR.
Ultimately one among two issues will occur: Webb will determine the right way to make this opposite-side breaking ball work, or he’ll ditch the experiment and return to throwing extra changeups to lefties, as custom calls for. Both method, there’s one other stage of efficiency to unlock right here, and it may make probably the greatest pitchers within the league even higher.