There are a lot of reasons why the Giants swept the Athletics over the weekend. One team has Logan Webb, and the other team doesn’t. The Giants were able to keep the homer-happy A’s in the yard. Both teams played error-free baseball, but the Giants saved their best defensive plays for the highest-leverage situations.
But if I had to put my finger on the biggest reason for the sweep, it’s that the entire A’s team drove in three runs in the series, and Wilmer Flores drove in nine. Heliot Ramos scored more runs in the three games than the A’s did. The Giants scored more runs in the third inning of the series opener than the A’s scored all weekend. You get the idea.
The Giants swept the A’s by pitching exceptionally well. As such, this version of the weekend takeaways will focus on the arms. Pitching, pitching, pitching. They say pitching wins ballgames, and after that display, who am I to disagree?
Hop in, folks, it’s 2012 again.
Ryan Walker’s back
That is a pun, and it’s very much intended. Ryan Walker is back, and he’s back because of his back. Or, at least, the direction his back is facing. Let’s start over.
Walker needed just seven pitches to close out Sunday’s win, and six of them were thrown for strikes. He got three outs on seven pitches to keep Saturday’s game a scoreless tie into extra innings. That’s the kind of efficiency he featured last season, and it’s part of what was missing this year. He was throwing baseballs where he wanted to throw them, which was both obvious and revelatory.
Before he threw his first pitch of the weekend, Mike Krukow was talking about adjustments that Walker and pitching coach J.P. Martinez had made. You can hear a snippet of Krukow’s enthusiasm here:
I half-jokingly worry about jinxing bullpens by writing about them, but think about the limb that an announcer climbs out on when talking about adjustments at the start of the inning. If Walker gave up four runs, Krukow would have to wear it the whole inning. Walker was so efficient, though, that he barely had time to describe the adjustments, other than to say that when a pitcher finds something in a side session that was missing, he knows he’s found it. It’s an unambiguous aha moment.
In Walker’s own words, he was “just super, extra rotational with his torso,” which … yeah, that’s like a jazz musician explaining why G♯min7(♭5) was the right chord instead of G♯min7(♭9). Just smile and nod.
We can try to understand, though. Here’s a four-pitch walk to lead off an inning just a couple of days ago.
If you compare the sinkers in the two videos, you can see a bit of a difference when Walker’s leg kick is at its highest. First, the lousy 3-0 sinker when all Walker was trying to do was throw a strike:
Second, the perfectly normal sinker to the intended location:
The different jerseys don’t help with an apples-to-apples comparison, but I think I see it. It’s a very, very slight difference, but the angle of his front leg helps illustrate it. His delivery in the second one would still make Tom Emanski’s head explode, but the back turn isn’t quite as extreme. Baseball is a sport that’s won or lost at the margins, and this is one of the best examples I can remember. It’s a granular change to anyone watching at full speed, but slow it down, and it’s the difference between a sinker yanked a foot off the plate and a calm first-pitch strike.
Walker’s 2024 was one of the best relief seasons in Giants history. Now he’s the closer on a team with three different right-handed relievers (Camilo Doval, Tyler Rogers and Randy Rodríguez) who have combined to allow fewer runs in 82.3 innings (eight) than poor Ryan Pressly allowed against the Giants on May 6. Now imagine if Walker is truly back because he has his back back to where he wants it. That would have the potential for 2015 Royals-level success out of the bullpen, and I don’t invoke that comparison lightly.
Landen Roupp thrives as Jordan Hicks’ role changes
Bryan Murphy, a writer at a website known as “McCovey Chronicles,” wrote a thoughtful post last week about the Giants getting Hayden Birdsong back into the rotation, and it focused on the idea that Roupp could be on more of a hot seat than Jordan Hicks was. Then Roupp went out and threw six scoreless, confident innings. This is yet another data point to support one of my firmest beliefs: Never trust anyone who has ever written for a blog.
That article still made sense, though. Roupp is a very inexperienced pitcher and, all things being equal, it’s easier to trust a veteran to fix whatever isn’t working. The Giants took the easiest and more obvious path, sending Hicks back to the bullpen, where he’s had plenty of career success. We’ll get to that choice in a bit, but the argument for Roupp sticking in the rotation, even with Birdsong and Kyle Harrison waiting for spots, clarified a bit with his outing over the weekend.
At the risk of going full George Will Sports Machine, Roupp is a pitcher at the nexus of present and future. There’s still development to unlock, and it might need to happen during a long, grueling pennant chase. The Giants are chasing a ceiling both in the short- and long-term, and the unpredictable nature of a young starter might cost them a couple of games. Roupp has enough talent to gain them extra wins this season, though, especially if he builds on the success of outings like the one he had on Saturday. And that would, in theory, gain them extra wins in future seasons.
You can do the same calculus for Hicks — he’s just two years older than Roupp, remember — but the tiebreaker for me is that one pitcher has plenty of career success in the bullpen, and the other one doesn’t. That’s not fair to Hicks, but you can blame the Cardinals for rushing him to the majors as a reliever in the first place. I like to blame the Cardinals for a lot of things. It’s probably Whitey Herzog’s fault when I overcook a steak, and it always has been.
We talked about what the Giants’ bullpen would look like if Walker gets back to his 2024 form, but now imagine it if Hicks can be an effective reliever again. That’s five hard-to-hit right-handers, all coming from different arm angles with freakishly unique repertoires. That would have the potential for 2015 Royals-level success out of the bullpen, and I don’t invoke that comparison lightly. I just invoke it multiple times when the Royals are coming to town, and I’m thinking about them more than I have in years.
Justin Verlander is ‘dealing with something physically’
It wasn’t uniformly positive for the Giants’ staff. Verlander walked five batters in four innings, and his velocity was down. After the game, he explained that he was “dealing with something physically,” but that it wasn’t a problem likely to get worse if he made his start on Sunday.
Verlander knows his own body. That’s not an outside observation, but something that’s been repeated by several people in the organization, often unprompted. It’s one of the biggest reasons he’s been able to pitch into his 40s. He doesn’t just know that the hip bone is connected to the backbone, and the backbone is connected to the shoulder bone, he knows why they’re all important to pitching.
It might be an issue that can be resolved on regular rest, an issue that it’ll take a start or two to fix, or it might be something that takes even more time. Either way, it’s not unexpected. Here’s a snippet from January, after Verlander signed:
(The Giants wouldn’t) be against the kind of pitcher who could start a Game 2 or 3 if the stars align. That pitcher would preferably sign a contract without too many zeros and commas. Verlander definitely fits from that perspective.
At the same time, the Giants and Posey are optimistic about the young pitching. Not so much that they’re going to pretend that’s the path to the postseason, but enough to not be scared away by the what-ifs of Verlander. If he makes just 15 starts, that doesn’t mean that they’re left with a season that’s half-empty; it means they’re left with a season that’s half-Birdsong. Or half-Landen Roupp.
The Giants were always well-positioned to fill in whatever gaps were left by a 42-year-old starter, while still having him for a possible postseason push. Nothing’s changed there, even if the physical issues are new.
Logan Webb is good, and you’re glad he’s on the Giants
I went longer than expected with the first two sections, so we’ll just let that subhead speak for itself. Webb didn’t do anything new or novel when throwing eight strong innings against the A’s on Friday night. If anything, he was much closer to the sinker-heavy, contact-seeking pitcher he was in previous seasons, rather than the bat-missing version he’s been for most of this season.
Other than that, steady as she goes. Pretend the text in bold is a few extra paragraphs and that there’s a reference from “The Simpsons” in there somewhere. Maybe the one about Homer naming the possum “Bitey.”
If you’re still not convinced, here are some moving pictures that are worth thousands and thousands of words:
(Top photo of Ryan Walker celebrating Sunday’s win over the Athletics: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)