The Giants are getting run on and run over
Things are coming apart for the San Francisco Giants. Their offense continues its unsustainable inconsistencies. Shouldered with picking up the bat’s slack, the defense has failed to rise to certain occasions, and the pitching has responded with retreat. Due to injury, the starting rotation has been whittled down to two men, both handed resounding ‘L’s’ in this most recent series against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Perhaps the most frustrating, debilitating, hands-to-knees-and-hang-your-head woe of them all is their handling—or lack of handling—of the running game.
That low moment came for Logan Webb on Sunday afternoon when Cardinals’ catcher Pedro Pagés stole second base in the 2nd inning.
It was Pagés first career stolen base, and worse, it was his first stolen base attempt in his career. The backstop in the 12th percentile of sprint speed slid safely into second with ease, well ahead of the desperate throw from Patrick Bailey after an obscenely large jump from first.
It’s possible Pagés capitalized on Webb’s focus on the hot hitting Masyn Winn rather than giving much credence to a slow-moving catcher at first, but the steal wasn’t just a crime of opportunity, rather a premeditated plan of attack against Webb and the Giants as a team.
Four bases were stolen on Webb’s watch on Sunday. 13 were stolen against the Giants over the 1-5 road trip, 25 and counting in June. San Francisco has allowed a MLB-leading 86 stolen bases—the second worst mark is 76.
Obviously, this level of inadequacy is a group effort. No one in the rotation or bullpen is especially good at holding runners once they’ve reached base. Camilo Doval, Ryan Walker, Blake Snell, Jordan Hicks—all are repeated victims of thievery. On Statcast’s Pitcher Running Game leaderboard, San Francisco ranks 28th in the league preventing runners from advancing. Individually, you have to scroll pretty far down before you find a name affiliated with our Giants, while Logan Webb scrapes the bottom of the barrel in terms of preventing runners from advancing, as well susceptible to the greatest jumps on stolen base attempts.
As the ace and worst of the bunch, he’ll draw our ire.
Webb’s 15 stolen bases allowed (to just 2 caught stealing) is the second most in the league behind Milwaukee’s Corbin Burnes. The right hander has already passed his total from 2022, and with not even half the total innings pitched, Webb is just 5 below his mark from last season.
Pagés may have surprised Webb, but he also read him like a book. By his own admission, Webb “sucks” at holding runners and commented that he got himself in a problematic rhythm on the mound.
“It’s not how you win baseball games.”
Webb evaluates his outing today and the Giants’ rough road trip pic.twitter.com/w4UGF5yLBs
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) June 23, 2024
In one sense, a rhythm is what you want as a pitcher. It means you are setting the pace of play, you are in control, but it also means a certain level of predictability. When a runner is on base, the worst thing you can do on the mound is become predictable. There’s a salaried and benefited position on every club called the first base coach whose job it is to study an opposing pitcher, figure out their habits, tics and tells, and pass that information along to the runner on base to exploit.
It’s the pitcher’s job on the mound to maintain control of the game by shaking things up every chance he can get, whether it be varying their looks over, adjusting how they arrive at set, incorporating more slide steps to be quicker to the plate, etc. The best preventive measure against the running game is hesitancy. Doubt and uncertainty locks a runner up more than anything.
Baseball history is punctuated with legendary steals: Jackie Robinson taking home, Rickey Henderson on second, gunning for Lou Brock’s title, Dave Roberts in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. All moments laden with the in-your-face inevitability of each break for the bag. Somehow that anticipation, certain dread—just again, inevitability—strikes us fans now whenever a runner reaches first. The league isn’t feeling too bashful around Giants’ pitchers. Alec Burleson, who is as his surname suggests more thick then fleet, stole second without a throw in the 1st on Sunday. Second pitch of the AB and he was gone, bolting up the line before Webb had even started his wind-up. He did it again in the 2nd, and everyone on the field, in the stands, at home knew he would.
Brazen acts of thievery, like pick-pocketing the person you’re having a conversation with, and the Giants have no response.
How did it get this bad? How do they do it?
With each runner on, Webb took the rubber holding the ball behind his back. He looked over his shoulder to first, and as he turned his upper body and head towards home, he nestled the ball into his glove at his belt. From that moment, it became a timing play for the runner. One second or two after, they took off with Webb initiating his wind-up a beat after.
Is that the secret? Could it be as simple as a count? Sometimes it is, but Bob Melvin and others pointed out the deficiencies are widespread enough that the issue has to be deeper. It’s not just gambling right or great timing—there’s got to be something else that Webb is doing that signals he’s throwing home before actually throwing home. A tell that helped Pagés pull off his steal after Burleson, and how Burleson pulled it off again in the same inning as Pagés after two throw-overs from Webb.
Maybe the angle of his upper body towards the plate? The slightest lift of his back shoulder? A twitch in the left buttocks? Whatever it is, it’s small, and I’m certainly not going to find it poring frame-by-frame over game clips on MLB Film Room.
But the signal isn’t Webb’s only problem. Like Hicks or Doval, he’s got a hitch or two in his delivery that buys the runner precious second-fractions to get further down the line. Hicks yanks up his heel, Webb swings his front leg out over the mound a bit instead of driving directly toward the plate. These lost milliseconds between wind-up initiation and release add up, and even one of the fastest backstops in the league can’t make up for that kind of time lost. Bailey has caught one runner stealing this month, and you can tell the frustration is growing. It’s wearing on him, seeing runner after runner trot down to second, and his throws and discernment feel like they’re fraying..
This is an important point. A stolen base doesn’t just occur in a vacuum. It’s a pebble of chaos, its ramifications rippling out over the at-bat at hand, the inning, the game.
A runner in motion forces a catcher to come out of his crouch early, blocking the umpire and often losing the call on borderline (or not-so borderline) pitches. A big jump leads to a rushed and often errant throw.
An extra 90 feet guarantees another stressful pitch with a runner in scoring position, compounding a frustrating walk, an error, a missed-location. It elevates the blood pressure of the pitcher and divides their attention.
For Logan Webb and the Giants, who excel at keeping the ball on the ground, a stolen base erases the opportunity for an unproductive out or an inning-saving double-play. More and more often that invaluable escape route has been blocked. Opponents without much pause or concern have been stealing second with runners at the corners, putting the Giants defense in a pickle. A no-throw down to second, and what once was a double-play possibility has become a heightened scoring threat. When the catcher has thrown down, a hot mess has often followed.
Webb also suffers from an inability to mitigate these gains of 90 feet because of his high contact rate and high hard-hit rate. Pagés stole second then scored on a single from Burleson that he drilled into the ground but was hit hard enough to find a hole up the middle. With a runner still on first and the infielders pinched up the middle that RBI single becomes an easy inning-ending double play. Webb struck out the side in the 2nd on Sunday, but those two singles and two stolen bases produced an insurance run for St. Louis, and a whole lot more frustration and stress.
Now think about all this consternation and frenzy foisted on the Giants’ pitching by opponents stealing bases—wouldn’t it be satisfying to inflict said craziness on others? The dropped 90-feet wouldn’t sting so bad if the offense had the ability to recoup the losses with some of our own base path madness. Corbin Burnes might be the worst at holding runners on, but at least he’s back up by his teammates: Milwaukee has the second most steals in the Majors. Their 107 stolen bases total is more than four times that of San Francisco’s 25—the lowest in the Majors. Their -61 differential is by far the worst in the league.
The Giants are getting burnt at both ends of the running game. They’re getting run over and left in the dust, and it’s getting harder and harder to watch.