Right-hander Logan Webb’s 152nd career major-league start will be his first against Minnesota on Saturday when the San Francisco Giants seek to halt the Twins’ seven-game home winning streak.
Minnesota rode a pitching gem by Chris Paddack to its sixth straight win overall, a 3-1 victory on Friday in the opener of the three-game series in Minneapolis. The Giants mustered just three hits in the setback.
San Francisco will hope for a similar effort from its ace, Webb (4-2, 2.61 ERA), who will be pitching for the fourth time this season in the game following a loss. The Giants have won two of those three contests.
Webb is scheduled to be opposed by Twins right-hander Joe Ryan (2-2, 2.93), a fellow 28-year-old who played his high school ball in the San Francisco Bay Area while Webb was starring in the Sacramento suburb of Rocklin.
Webb, a career-long Giant who skipped college after having been the team’s fourth-round pick in 2014, has faced all but three of the 30 major league teams in his career. Other than the Giants and Twins, he has yet to pitch against the Cleveland Guardians.
The 2024 All-Star has alternated wins and losses in his last five outings, most recently having thrown seven innings of one-run ball in a 9-3 home triumph over the Colorado Rockies on Sunday.
In Ryan, Webb will be up against a rival of sorts. While Webb was progressing through the Giants’ system, Ryan was attending Stanislaus State in the California central valley, studying the form of one of his idols.
“Anything that Webb’s throwing,” Ryan said of what he was hoping to absorb, even as both have become successful major-leaguers. “I’ve been sitting on the iPad watching his outings. He just looks insane right now. That sinker-sweeper combo, the velo on both — and how smooth the mechanics are …”
Ryan has been Webb-like in his last two starts, limiting the Los Angeles Angels and Boston Red Sox to a total of one run and eight hits over 13 innings with 19 strikeouts.
The fifth-year major-leaguer will be facing the Giants for the fourth time, having gone 2-1 with a 3.31 ERA in the previous starts.
If there was a positive for the Giants in the series-opening defeat, it was that the infield played its second straight error-free game. A misplay by left fielder Heliot Ramos on Byron Buxton’s sixth-inning single, which allowed Minnesota’s final run to score, was San Francisco’s only miscue in the fast-moving affair.
So far, shortstop Willy Adames’ vow to turn things around after committing seven errors in his first 36 games has come to fruition.
“You get into bad habits and stuff. You just get unlucky sometimes,” he said of a rut both he and third baseman Matt Chapman had gotten into. “I feel like for me and Chappy, it hasn’t been the best. We’ll be good. We’re going to be alright. We’re just going to continue to work.”
–Field Level Media
