SAN FRANCISCO — How long can the Giants keep this up?
They have a middling offense and defense (both ranked 18th by FanGraphs’ metrics), which seem to be fading further by the day. Their big, flashy, and super-expensive free-agent signing, Willy Adames, is 12 percentage points worse than a league-average hitter and is the single worst defensive shortstop in the game (he had another error Wednesday.) They’re striking out nearly as often as the Chicago White Sox. Justin Verlander is yet to register a win as a Giant and is likely to be put on the shelf with a lat injury. On top of that, manager Bob Melvin has already made a rotation change that had nothing to do with injury.
And yet the Giants are stalking the pace of the league-ruining Dodgers in the National League West and have one of the best records in baseball, even with a loss to the Royals on Wednesday.
Yes, so many signs point to regression — and not the fun kind — for the Giants as the season progresses into the summer months.
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Because if the Giants have the Cy Young Award worthy-Webb we saw in his first 11 starts, San Francisco stands a chance of keeping this good thing going. A top-of-the-line starter like Webb is the foundation on which playoff teams are built.
But if the Webb we saw Wednesday is more of the norm moving forward, the Giants’ future looks far bleaker.
To be more specific, it looks a lot more like the last few years — .500ish.
The Giants really needed that elite Webb in the rubber match against the Royals ahead of a nine-game, three-city road trip. If his newfound strikeout prowess wasn’t going to show up, his ability to induce weak contact and work late into games would work.
But neither was on display. Webb pitched only four innings and surrendered 10 hits and six runs (three earned) while striking out only five and allowing 11 hard-hit balls.
Every pitcher — even the best — is entitled to a rough outing, but Webb picked a bad time for arguably his worst start of the campaign.
“You can’t put that on his shoulders to give us seven innings every time, but there is an expectation on a day like this, when we’re going to have several guys [in the bullpen] that aren’t going to be available, knowing that he’s on the mound and he wants to be out there for a significant period of time and can throw over well over 100 pitches,” Melvin said before the contest.
Webb did not live up to expectations.
The Royals weren’t just sitting on Webb’s sinker. They mashed that, yes — making contact with 100 percent of sinkers in the zone while averaging 96 miles per hour of exit velocity — but they were also able to square up his sweeper, which he couldn’t locate Wednesday, and his changeup, which he threw 30 percent of the time, a stark increase from recent contests.
And when he was chased after 77 pitches, it left the back-end of the bullpen to clean up the mess.
The Giants lost 8-4.
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One game and one series does not define a team or a player, but Wednesday felt informative.
The Giants are now 10-9 in May, despite winning three games against the Rockies and sweeping the A’s last weekend.
It’s all very Zaidi-era coded: a steady and oftentimes aggravating brand of meh.
Is that a terrible surprise? The roster is, largely the same as last year’s. The power of friendship and good vibes the Giants started this season with can only last long — baseball is a grind and we’re all about to enter the thick of it.
The Giants’ upcoming road trip will be a litmus test for this team.
If there was ever a time to kick it back into that higher gear, it’s these nine upcoming games.
The Nationals are young and feisty, but beatable. The Tigers might have the best record in baseball, but the Giants should avoid their ace Tarik Skubal — arguably the best pitcher in baseball. Finally, the Marlins are better than people think, but that doesn’t mean they’re good.
This could be a real palate-cleanser of a trip for a team that needs to reassert itself as something to be recognized in the National League.
But these could also be the nine games that wipe out the final bits of the team’s early-season momentum, pushing the Giants into serious on-the-fly changes — uncharted territory for first-year director of baseball operations Buster Posey.
With the team’s rotation in flux, Webb might pull two starts on that trip. They can’t look like Wednesday’s.
Because now more than ever this season, the Giants are relying on their ace.
And if Webb has, indeed, leveled up his form, then the Giants can make the case that they, too, are a better team than in years past.
Even as the Giants arrow tilts down, this seems like the more likely outcome. Webb’s success this campaign wasn’t fools gold. it was the byproduct of a new approach — and a new pitch (a cutter) — against lefties, and that steady diet of weak contact the Giants could always rely on him to provide. (Save for Wednesday.)
But baseball is a cruel and fickle game. What if Webb’s early-season success proves to be short-lived? What if he’s lost the feel for that sweeper — a pitch he was throwing more than a quarter of the time going into Wednesday’s start — and teams are sitting on the sinker (.298 expected batting average against)?
That means another long, mediocre summer for the Giants.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in another one.
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