Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: San Francisco Giants
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
The Giants were the most annoying team in the league for fantasy baseball purposes in 2022 and it wasn’t close. They pinch hit all the damn time and had almost no consistency from their starting rotation. They have a bunch of old dudes on the team and they just do weird stuff. It works out fine on the field, as they just keep over-performing their expectations, but it makes me mad and I’m not excited to write this.
I think their roster will look quite a bit different come March than what we’ll talk about here, as they’re likely to be aggressive in free agency. We’ll do what we can for now, off we go!
Pitchers
Logan Webb
Webb is one of the few guys on this team that we know will be firmly in play for standard-size fantasy leagues in 2022.
2021:
26 GS, 148.1 IP, 3.03 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, 26.5% K%, 6.0% BB%, 31.9% CSW%, 13.4% SwStr%, 62.2% GB%, 5.6% Brl%
2022:
32 GS, 192.1 IP, 3.18 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 20.7% K%, 6.2% BB%, 30.1% CSW%, 11.4% SwStr%, 57.8% GB%, 5.5% Brl%
The push upwards in innings while maintaining a strong ERA and fine WHIP makes for an overall good year for Webb. You didn’t see improvement from Webb in 2022, but he didn’t really let you down if you drafted him either.
A big question with Webb is what his pitch mix will be on any given day. Here’s the pitch usages from 2021 → 2022
SI 37.7% → 32.9%
SL 27.7% → 32.7%
CH 23.6% → 31.2%
FF 9.8% → 3.2%
FC 1.3% → 0.0%
(SI = Sinker, FF = Four-Seam Fastball, FC = Cutter)
So he was more or less the same guy, mostly going sinker+slider+changeup. The biggest change in the stats was the drop in K% and SwStr% - which of course, are related. And those drops were massive - five points in K% and two points in SwStr%. Not what we want to see.
I think he could bring both of those numbers back up if he throws some more sliders or brings back the four-seamer/cutter - or even just improves on some or all of these pitches. He’s a talented pitcher with a lot of different ways to attack hitters. It’s hard to get a hold on Webb, but the track record is pretty impressive in these two years.
One last thing to note is that the slider got significantly worse from 2021 → 2022 in terms of SwStr% (22.1% → 13.4%). Not sure I can explain that one, but it’s not a point that supports a high K% from Webb as we go forward.
This is some of my worst work here on this write-up of Webb. I just don’t know what to do with the guy. He’ll probably be fine, but he’ll probably be a guy you have to draft as your SP2 or SP3 - and I think I’d just rather have someone with more strikeouts for those slots.
That said, he’s a pretty easy rank right now as I haven’t ranked many really good pitchers so far. I’m sliding him in between Zac Gallen and Joe Ryan - that seems pretty obvious to me right now!
Comps/RankArounds: Joe Ryan, Zac Gallen
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