No team has watched Logan Webb scale dugout steps and trot out to the mound more than the Dodgers.
Webb faced the Giants’ rivals four times last year and five times in 2021. His two National League Division Series gems in 2021 are the foundation of the 26-year-old’s lore.
“To be able to come right out of the chute and be a dominant pitcher and have other teams be afraid of you is really cool,” Giants reliever John Brebbia said of Webb before Monday’s game.
The Dodgers didn’t look afraid of Webb on Monday night. They seemed familiar with the budding ace.
In the first rivalry game of the season, Webb — among MLB’s best at keeping the ball in the yard — allowed two home runs. Max Muncy and Mookie Betts, the two Dodgers who beat Webb, went a combined 6-for-8 and drove in all nine of LA’s runs.
“In order for us to beat a team like the Dodgers, he’s going to have to be great,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said postgame.
The Dodgers’ 9-1 rout continued the trend of a lopsided rivalry that began last year. In the last 20 games between San Francisco (4-6) and Los Angeles, the Giants are 4-16 while getting outscored 108 to 56.
Though the Dodgers’ roster has been depleted compared to recent years, they still trotted out four players with OPSes of over 1.000 so far this season. And none of those four were named Mookie Betts or Max Muncy.
Betts entered the night 10-for-23 against Webb, though he hadn’t taken him deep. His advantage in the matchup continued as the homer drought — if you could call it that — ended.
To lead off the game, Betts turned on a 2-2 sinker low and inside. Webb had gotten ahead 0-2 and spun a solid out pitch, but the former MVP crushed it.
Two innings later, James Outman, one of the Dodgers off to a scorching start, drove a triple over Mike Yastrzemski’s leap in right-center. Then Muncy socked a three-run home run to center field off a slider.
It was Muncy’s third home run off Webb in 21 at-bats.
Webb, who was calling his own game via PitchCom for the first time, delivered four straight sliders to Muncy in the at-bat.
“It seems like he and (Freddie Freeman) both — I don’t really know what they’re looking for,” Webb said. “It seems like I’ll throw all my different pitches and somehow they’re on it.”
Between 2021 and 2022, no starting pitcher in baseball allowed fewer home runs than Webb. He gave up nine in 2021 and 11 in a career-high 192.1 innings last year.
But already this year, he’s given up four bombs. Webb allowed multiple home runs in just one of his 32 starts last year. That’s happened twice in three outings in 2023.
“Too many mistake pitches,” Webb said when asked of his takeaways from his first three outings.
Webb settled in after the two homers and got through six innings. The sign of an elite pitcher is the ability to get deep into games even on nights in which he doesn’t have his best stuff.
“I do think that his location hasn’t been perfect,” Kapler said. “That’s not unusual. He’s a guy that relies on heavy movement, and every once in a while teams will square up his sinker. I do think they’re elevating him more than they have in the past, but I don’t see that as problematic long-term. What I see from Logan is a guy who’s getting swing-and-misses and not walking guys. And he’s throwing hard. This is a good signal, early in the year, that he’s coming out throwing 94.”
Even so, Webb hasn’t thus far met the perhaps impossibly high standard he sets for himself. He has said that he isn’t satisfied with his performance last year, even though he posted a career-high 2.90 ERA.
And for his well-earned reputation of being a big-game pitcher — one that stems from his two Bumgarnian-esque NLDS starts against LAD and his Opening Day outings — Webb is now 2-5 in 11 career regular season games against the Dodgers with a 4.60 ERA.
“I hope and I expect expectations to be very high for Logan,” Kapler said March 27. “I believe he should be a perennial Cy Young Award contender and one of the best pitchers in baseball on a year-to-year basis. I think that because of his pitch quality. I think that because of his leadership characteristics. I think that because of his preparation and his pedigree…He sets the bar pretty high for himself, and we set the bar pretty high for him.”
The Dodgers’ 26-year-old counterpart, Julio Urías, has made himself a perennial Cy Young candidate. He’s now 3-0 after three starts this year. The only run he allowed came on a solo home run to Wilmer Flores.
And while Urías’ bullpen held the lead he handed them, Giants relievers got scuffed just like Webb.
Sean Hjelle, entering to face the top of LA’s order with two outs, immediately allowed an RBI single to Betts. Two singles thereafter loaded the bases for Muncy, who crushed his second of the night.
Muncy’s grand slam turned what could have been a competitive game into a landslide. At that point, Dodgers batters owned 14 of the 16 hardest-hit balls of the night.
Muncy is quickly becoming one of the most prolific Giant-killers in baseball. After Monday, he has 23 career home runs against San Francisco in 73 games. His career-high seven RBI increases his total to 51 runs driven in; both stats are his most against any single opponent.
Last year, the Giants set a franchise record for most losses in a season to the Dodgers (15). That record won’t ever be broken by either club in the rivalry; with the new balanced schedule, the Dodgers and Giants will only meet 13 times all season.
The next time San Francisco hosts the Dodgers will be the last home series of the regular season, on Sept. 29.
If more of the same continues in the rivalry, the reduction in quantity of rivalry games will be a schedule privilege, not a quirk for the Giants.