In high school in California, Webb was more noted for being Rocklin High School's quarterback, throwing for 47 touchdowns and nearly 3,800 yards in three seasons. 

A three-year starter at quarterback in high school, Webb wasn't all that well known in scouting circles heading into his senior year in 2014 because football had kept him off the showcase circuit for the most part. when he started throwing 95-96 mph off the mound as a senior, those football plans were quickly shelved. San Francisco had a built-in advantage because Rocklin, CA is not far from Sacramento, so they were able to run in multiple scouts to see him.

And in 2014, Logan posted a 0.49 ERA with 73 strikeouts for Rocklin. (Spring 2015)

June 2014: The Giants chose him in the fourth round, out of Rocklin High School in California. Scout Keith Snider signed him at the mid-July deadline, for a $600,000 bonus that was well over the $440,600 as slot money. 

Logan passed up a baseball scholarship to Cal-Poly in order to start his pro career.

Rocklin High is near Sacramento. He started at quarterback in his junior and senior years. Growing up, football was his favorite sport.

“You kind of have to get fired up to play a football game,” Webb said. “I try to bring that to the mound every time I pitch.”

Richmond pitching coach Glenn Dishman termed Webb “off the charts on all (that) intangible-type stuff that you can’t really teach.”

In fact, Dishman—who spent a dozen years working in the Dodgers’ organization—likened Webb’s makeup to that of a young Clayton Kershaw.

“I see some of the same type of attributes,” Dishman said. “Just that little special, ‘Hey, I’m doing everything I can to get to the big leagues and be a winner . . .'"

“I love the kid. He’s fun to be around. He’s great to talk to . . . I’m hoping he’s the complete package.” (Steve Kroner - Baseball America - 11/16/2018)

In 2015, Baseball America rated Logan as the 29th-best prospect in the Giants organization.

Webb finally returned to the book as 6th-best Giants prospect in the spring of 2019. And in 2020, he was at #11.

DRUG SUSPENSION

May 1-July 25, 2019: Logan Webb, was suspended 80 games for testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug.

Webb, who had been pitching at Double-A Richmond, tested positive for Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone, a violation of baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.

Major League Baseball announced the suspension, which is effective immediately and without pay.

In a statement released by the Giants, Webb suggested he’s not aware of how the drug got in his system and did not take it knowingly, saying, “For the past month and a half, I have tried endlessly to find the answer to why the M4 metabolite was found in my urine sample.”

In recent years, Boston’s Michael Chavis, Toronto’s Chris Colabello and Philadelphia’s Daniel Stumpf and Alec Asher have been suspended for Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone, an anabolic-androgenic steroid.

“I know in my heart that something someday will be put into the world to prove my innocence,” Webb said, according to the statement. “That being said, I do not disagree with MLB’s policy and respect the drug-testing system that has been put in place. I love this game and respect it too much to ever cheat it. I am heartbroken over this, and I am not sure why this is happening to me, but in life some things happen for a reason, and it is my job now to find that reason.”

In the statement, Webb apologized to his family, friends, teammates and the Giants’ organization for the “negative attention this has brought to them.”

“Over the next couple of months and the rest of my career, I will continue to work on regaining the trust and respect I’ve earned over the past few years with my teammates and the Giants’ organization,” Webb said in the statement. “I will be back and better than ever.”

The Giants also issued a statement: “The San Francisco Giants are disappointed that Logan Webb has violated the terms of Major League Baseball’s Drug Prevention and Treatment Program resulting in his suspension. The Giants organization fully supports the MLB program and its efforts to eliminate performance-enhancing substances from our game.”

In 2021, Logan lost his 20-year-old cousin, Kade Webb, to a Fentanyl overdose. And he recognizes that his stature gives him a platform. He is using it to share his family's personal heartache because he doesn't want anyone else to endure a similar tragedy.

Now the Giants are getting involved. Logan and Shana Alexander, a clinical psychologist and the Giants’ Employee Assistance Program director, have begun to sketch out an awareness campaign that will begin with visits to high school assemblies in the Sacramento area. 

He started a group text with all his aunts, uncles, cousins and all the younger kids in his family: “Text this group if you ever need anything. If someone’s hurting or not feeling right or going through something, you have to talk to us. Because there are a lot of people who want to help you.”

“I’ve had my bouts with a little bit of depression and stuff like that,” Logan said. “I’m lucky to have someone like Shana to talk to and people close to me I can open up to. Maybe Kade didn’t have that. Maybe I could have done something more to help. That’s something I’m still trying to cope with.

“I just miss seeing him smile.” (Baggarly - TheAthletic.com - May 24, 2022)

March 14, 2023: There was never much mystery over who would start for the Giants on Opening Day, but manager Gabe Kapler made the news official on Tuesday: Logan Webb will get the ball for the club’s regular-season opener at Yankee Stadium on March 30.

Plenty of intriguing subplots will surround Webb’s second consecutive Opening Day start, as he’s expected to oppose Yankees ace Gerrit Cole (Brandon Crawford’s brother-in-law) and take on a lineup headlined by reigning American League MVP Aaron Judge, whom Webb unsuccessfully tried to recruit to San Francisco in the offseason.

“It’s an honor to be able to say I started on Opening Day, especially because we’ll be at Yankee Stadium,” Webb said following the Giants’ 7-6 win over the D-backs at Salt River Fields. “My family’s pretty excited about it. I think there’s like 50 people coming, so it’s going to be just like pitching at home. I’m excited.” (M Guardado - MLB.com - March 14, 2023)

TRANSACTIONS

Webb has two 91-93 mph FASTBALLS—a four seamer and two-seamer, with lateral movement, but that is hard to control.  The Giants will need to work with him on developing his 84-86 mph circle-CHANGEUP, but he's a relatively fresh, athletic arm. He also has an 81-83 mph wipeout SLIDER with swing-and-miss potential and a slurvy shape. 

Webb lost some velo on both his four-seamer and two-seamer following his 2018 season. His power breaking ball is a plus offering that was his best weapon in the Majors, combining slider velocity and curveball depth. He made progress with his sinking changeup last year, giving him an effective third pitch.

Outside of needing some time to regain his control following his elbow reconstruction, Webb has done a nice job of translating his athleticism into strikes throughout his career. The next step will be to upgrade his command, because big leaguers punished his fastball when he didn't locate it well. How he fares in 2020 could go a long way to determining whether he reaches his ceiling as a No. 3 starter or goes down a path to becoming a late-inning reliever. 

Logan is working on making his arm slot consistent with all of his pitches. (Spring, 2020)

2019 Season Pitch Usage: 4-seam Fastball: 42.6% of the time; Sinker 13.8%; Change 20.1%; and Curve 23.5% of the time. Average velocity: 4-seam 93.3 mph, Sinker 92, Change 85, and Curve 82 mph.

2020 Season Pitch Usage: 4-seam Fastball: 32.1% of the time; Sinker 16.5%; Change 30.8%; Slider 5.3%; and Curve 15.3% of the time. Average velocity: 4-seam 93.5 mph, Sinker 92.1, Change 85, Slider 90.8, and Curve 81.7 mph.

2022 Season Pitch Usage/Avg. Velo: Sinker 33% - 91.7 mph; Slider 32.7% - 82.4 mph; Change 31% - 86.3 mph; Fastball 3% - 92.4 mph.

Webb’s below-average control has been raw ever since he returned from surgery. He walked roughly four batters per nine innings in 2018. The Giants were focused on limiting his innings, so he was airing it out in short stints more than he will in the future. (Spring, 2019)

The Giants let his arm recover in pro ball, throwing him only three times in the Rookie-level Arizona League before shutting him down until instructional league. Webb is a long way from San Francisco, but he's the kind of athletic power arm the Giants have done a great job of developing. (Spring 2015)

Logan should develop into a workhorse righthander who eats up a lot of innings.

2019 Season: The Giants have a promising righthander in rookie Logan Webb, who is expected to be a key contributor out of the rotation in 2020. He debuted with the Giants in August and never looked back, logging a 5.22 ERA over eight starts. Webb spent the offseason in Arizona and worked with director of pitching Brian Bannister and coordinator of pitching analysis Matt Daniels to continue to refine his repertoire. He is now throwing a cutter to pair with his two-seam fastball and is working to add more sweep to his slider—tweaks that he hopes will allow him to take another step forward in 2020.

2020 Improvements: When Logan made his Major League debut in 2019, it was easy to see all the tools that made him the organization’s top pitching prospect.

At 22, Webb showcased a mid-90s fastball he could command on both sides of the plate, a sharp breaking ball and a polished changeup that fooled the likes of lefthanded sluggers Cody Bellinger, Joc Pederson and Eric Hosmer.

Webb didn’t fare as well as he hoped last year, but he’ll enter 2020 with some new tools in his belt. The right-hander tinkered with his two-seam fastball and will mix in a cutter to keep hitters off balance. (Kerry Crowley - Feb. 15, 2020)

Sept 7, 2021:  Logan gave up three runs over seven innings, snapping his streak of 14 consecutive starts in which he'd allowed no more than two runs.  It was the longest such streak by a Giants pitcher since Ferdie Schupp went 16 in a row between 1916-1917.  Only seven players in the modern era have had a longer streak.

As of the start of the 2022 season, Logan had a career record of 16-10 with a 3.94 ERA, having allowed 18 home runs and 233 hits in 242 innings.

NEW ARM ANGLE WORKS LIKE MAGIC

After Christmas in 2019, Logan got a call from Brian Bannister, the former major-league pitcher, who the San Francisco Giants had just hired to fill a new-age role titled "vice president of pitching development." Bannister was tasked with working with Giants pitchers and coaches to build the best possible deliveries and pitches for all the arms in the system.

After some brief introductory small talk, Webb was quickly taken aback by the message.

"Maybe 45 seconds into the call, he’s talking about how I'm going to change arm slots," Webb told theScore earlier this season. "Forty-five seconds in and you want me to switch everything I've done?"

 Prior to hiring Bannister, Giants coaches were working with Webb on refining his four-seam fastball, his primary offering. They wanted him to pitch more effectively with it at the top of the zone, and also wanted him to add a cutter to play off it. (In the Statcast era, elevated four-seamers are an en vogue pitch designed to get swing and miss above uppercut swings.) That experiment was now over, and Bannister recommended Webb do something completely different.

At the time, Webb was coming off his first partial season in the majors—a season of struggles. He was hit hard in his first 39 innings, posting a 5.22 ERA. As he digested Bannister's message and plan, Webb became open to it.

The story of Webb's ascension to the top of a major-league rotation, where the Giants need him to keep pitching well to try and jump back into the wild-card race, is a story about individualized development. The idea that there are one-size-fits-all organization philosophies in how or what to throw are over. The Giants build upon an individual's strength. And what Webb did so naturally well after an adjustment has allowed him to ride the wave of one of baseball's great breakthroughs in pitching science, one that in December 2019 even the Giants didn't see coming.

​​A few weeks after the call, Webb reported to spring training and began working on the Giants' plan for him.

"They literally told me to throw sidearm," Webb said.

Bannister shared with Webb video of Chris Sale's motion; Bannister was familiar with the lefty ace from his time in Boston. The goal was for Webb to throw nearer to Sale's low arm slot. So in the sun-soaked Arizona bullpens, Webb started dropping down with little initial instruction other than to throw lower and find something that felt comfortable.

Watching over the project was then first-year pitching coach Andrew Bailey. Bailey and the Giants staff felt Webb should embrace his "unique" athletic movements and be more rotational than direct to home plate in his delivery.

 Once a pitcher himself, Andrew Bailey helped Webb build a new throwing motion. "When I first came on, Logan was a prospect with some big-league time and he really didn't understand himself as a mover, as a pitcher, what he was trying to do - and it's a scary place," Bailey told theScore. "You start to struggle, you get internally focused on some delivery stuff. You don't have a foundation."

Rather than burden Webb with too much information, Bailey focused on a few cues about timing and throwing motion.

Webb's vertical release—how high a pitcher releases the ball above the ground—dropped from 5.58 feet in 2019 to an average of 4.99 feet over the last two seasons. Of 463 pitchers to qualify over those time periods, only A.J. Puk and Javy Guerra lowered their arm slots more.

The arm slot change was key because Webb was going to alter what he threw out of it.

Instead of four-seamers, Webb was to only throw two-seamers, which the Giants felt was a better pitch in terms of movement profile. While sinkers had fallen out of fashion with many pitchers, Webb was reminded: not too long ago, Jake Arrieta won a Cy Young with the Cubs by relying on a sinker-slider mix.

Even in long toss and in catch with teammates, Webb was to throw with only a two-seam grip - no four-seamers. That was the message from Bannister and Bailey. His right index finger and middle fingers were to go along with the seams, not run perpendicular to them. They were going to still try and miss bats, of course, but ground balls were great, too.

Webb had thrown two-seamers before in the minors, when his elbow started to hurt, but after Tommy John surgery he added velocity and the Giants thought he should switch to a four-seamer. The truth, though, was that he never quite felt comfortable trying to be an up-in-the-zone, four-seam pitcher. Perhaps this would feel more natural.

But then COVID hit, shutting camps down. While play eventually resumed in the summer, Webb's performance was uneven in a shortened Year 1 of his new self. He struggled to command the ball, but there was a silver lining. All his pitches—his two-seamer, slider, and changeup—picked up movement, and the gains couldn't be explained by spin-based movement.

Webb and Giants were tapping into something new.​​

As Webb struggled to start Year 2 of his project in 2021, there was talk of him moving to the bullpen prior to his May 17 start at Cincinnati. He was still trying to get comfortable with the new motion and arsenal when he tweaked his shoulder during his pregame warmup.

He elected to try and pitch through the discomfort. As he walked to the dugout after warming up, he told himself to just have fun with it. He threw six shutout innings.

"I just wanted to go out there and prove I can stay healthy, throw strikes, and show the stuff that I can offer," Webb said. "I was just trying to have fun with it (that day). The rest is a blur." (Travis Sawchik - Aug. 6, 2022)

Ever since, Webb's has been one of the best pitchers in the Majors, ranking eighth in FanGraphs WAR and 10th in ERA (2.86).

And he'd never heard the term "seam-shifted wake" until early that season.

"I didn't really know it until last year when I sat down with Bannister and Bailey and all those guys really pointed to me why my two-seam is moving the way it is, and why my changeup is the same way," Webb said.

The Giants taught Webb to be more consistent in generating seam effect. The seams on the two-seamer and changeup needed to be oriented in such a way that there was nearly always a seam presence on specific areas of the ball as it spun, and smooth areas elsewhere, creating an imbalance in air flow: turbulent air in one area, smoother air in another. They used high-speed cameras and other available tech to give Webb feedback.

"Everyone has thrown (a) sinker and thought, 'Oh man, how do I throw that again, that was gross?'" Bailey said. "Well, we do that by hitting that orientation eight times out of 10. That's when you tap into your Edgertronic (high-speed camera). How often can you do that? How repeatable is that, that's the teaching practice."

The feedback from high-speed cameras captured the good and poor releases in detail, showing how exactly Webb's fingertips influenced the spin axis and seam alignment. It helped guide the Giants and Webb in getting to the seam effect more often.

Webb's vertical sinker movement improved from 25 inches in 2019 to 27.2 inches in 2020, to 31.7 inches in 2021, and to a career best 34.6 inches in 2022. This year, his sinker is moving nine inches more than the average major league two-seamer. His changeup movement improved, too, from 38 inches of drop in 2019 to 41.6 last year and 41.9 this year.

"When you get that seam-shifted wake the right way, it comes out and at the last second: bang," Webb said. "When it's not, it's a little slower and gives the hitter a better chance."

For instance, Greg Maddux's comeback, two-seam fastball was likely benefiting from seam effects.

 Professor Smith discussed further on a podcast: "Sometimes people say, 'Hey, nice curveball' when they threw a changeup. The reason they say that is because it's being forced downward … pushed down by the seam."

And Webb has captured this invisible force.

"I think the added movement Logan gets from his seam orientation is unique to himself," Bailey said. "I think there's a series of movers (in baseball) that fall into that bucket. Anatomically we cannot make changes, they're kinda unique to themselves. Some guys can acquire it, some guys cannot. When a pitcher can acquire that for more than one pitch in his arsenal, it's really unique and a beautiful thing. You get outlier movement that hitters aren't used to seeing."

"For me, it's late life," Bailey said of the seam-shifted effect. "If you see a sinker down and away, 'Oh man, that's late life.' For me, that's what seam effects are visually. 'Oh, that just dropped off a table.' That's the suck down that you are able to tap into from seam effects."

By the second half of last season, Webb's sinker became one of the best pitches in baseball, helping the Giants win 107 games. Webb was excellent in two starts in the NLDS against the rival Dodgers.

And the reinvention, the education, the magic of seam effects, it all started with a phone call and a willingness to try something new.

"It changed my career."  (Travis Sawchik - Aug. 6, 2022)

 2023 Steamer Projections: 32 G, 193.0 IP, 3.78 ERA, 3.53 FIP, 1.30 WHIP, 20.3 K%, 6.7 BB%, 3.0 fWAR

Webb comes into 2023 off an 11th-place Cy Young finish and a season in which he posted a career-best in innings pitched, ERA and HR/9 (0.51).

In each of the last two seasons, the top pitcher from the San Francisco Giants — Kevin Gausman and then Carlos Rodón — was named an NL All-Stars. Well, this coming year, Webb will take over as ace of the Giants’ staff and look to continue the trend that Gausman and Rodón started.

Like Lange, Webb’s projections don’t quite look like that of an All-Star, but projection systems don’t love pitchers that profile as hard-contact limiters — see Alek Manoah’s projected 4.03 ERA.

But Webb’s past two years tell us that he belongs in the All-Star conversation. He’s thrown 340.2 innings in that time, with a 2.96 ERA, 2.90 FIP and a 6.1% walk rate.

His sinker and slider had run values of -9 and -12, respectively, and both pitches help the 26-year-old generate a 56.7% ground ball rate. Webb profiles similarly to Framber Valdez. They finished first and second in groundball rate, top-five in HR/9 and posted similar strikeout and walk rates in 2022.  (Zach Worden | January 17, 2023)

Midseason 2016: Webb underwent Tommy John surgery.

So his 2017 season was limited to 15 relief appearances for short-season Salem-Keizer.

April 18-20, 2021: Logan was on the IL.

May 19-29, 2021: Logan was on the IL with a right shoulder strain.