Logan Webb: Knee discomfort no excuse for poor outing vs. Padres
SAN FRANCISCO - The Giants can generally rely on Logan Webb to eat up innings even on days when their ace isn’t at his best, but that wasn’t the case on Tuesday evening. Following a 10-5 loss Tuesday to the San Diego Padres, manager Tony Vitello explained why.
Vitello shared that Webb, who threw only 62 pitches en route to allowing six runs over a season-low four innings, was pulled early due to knee discomfort.
“I don’t want to take him out of the game,” Vitello said. “I guess you pay your ticket, you can voice your opinion. We got a lot of guys like that, but I’ll ride or die with that guy until he says he’s ready to come out of the game or reaches an unreasonable point past 100 pitches or whatever it might be. So, that led into us making a move.”
Vitello said that the ailment cropped up during the start, adding that it’s “nothing to freak out about in my opinion.” After a 21-pitch fourth inning where he allowed five runs, Vitello pulled the plug on Webb’s eighth start of the year and went to his bullpen.
Once Webb departed, Vitello used four relievers (JT Brubaker, Ryan Borucki, Gregory Santos, Joel Peguero) to cover the final four innings. Webb, who took his fourth loss of the season, was firm in not blaming the knee discomfort on the poor outing.
“Not an excuse for anything that happened out there,” Webb said.
When Webb was asked if he had to be talked out of exiting the game early, the right-hander responded that he “probably shouldn’t have been in the game to begin with” - not because of the knee, but because he assessed he pitched poorly.
“I gave up the bloop hit down the third-base line, the other one down the right-field line, the fielder’s choice, and then the wheels fell off,” Webb said. “Hitting guys, throwing pitches where I shouldn’t throw them, just bad.”
“Remove that inning, and he’s been really good for us,” Vitello said. “So, I’m willing to bet battling some of that discomfort played into it. How much, I don’t know.”
Webb appeared to be finding his rhythm on the mound before Tuesday night. In April, he allowed 12 earned runs over 33 innings (3.27 ERA) with 27 strikeouts. Webb’s last outing was arguably his best of the early season, one in which he pitched seven innings of one-run ball with six strikeouts against the Philadelphia Phillies.
“You’re only as good as your last outing; last outing was pretty damn good,” Vitello said. “I would think tonight he wasn’t at his best physically, so it would’ve been tough to be at his best physically. But I do know he’s a guy who, again, has an awfully high standard of what he wants the team to achieve and what he wants to achieve.
“When it doesn’t go well on a couple of occasions, he doesn’t just drive home at night and say, ‘That’s OK, I’m going to go to bed and go to work the next day.’ He’s pissed.”
As things stand, Webb’s 5.06 ERA is his highest mark through his first eight starts of a season since he was a rookie in 2019. Last season, he had a 2.61 ERA through his first eight outings.
Rodriguez knocks off milestones
One of the few bright spots in an otherwise dour night was rookie catcher Jesus Rodriguez, who recorded his first career hit, RBIs and home run.
Rodriguez collected the first hit of his career in the bottom of the second inning by inside-outing a sinker from the Padres’ Walker Buehler, shooting a bloop single into shallow right field. Third-base coach Hector Borg threw up the stop sign for Willy Adames when Adames was still about 10 feet from third base, but Adames ran right through it and beat the throw from right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr.
The rookie’s second hit was also of the opposite-field variety, albeit with a lot more thump. On a chilly San Francisco night, Rodriguez sent a slider from Jeremiah Estrada into the right-field arcade, the 81st instance of a right-handed batter hitting an opposite-field home run in Oracle Park history.
“A wise man told me there’s more hits on this side of the barrel opposed to the end of the bat,” Vitello said. “It wasn’t as pretty as the home run, but he’s in a good position to hit. And when you’re in a good position to hit, you quote-unquote luck your way into some hits or whatever you want to call it.
“The bottom line is, he got that first one out of the way. It was a lot of fun for everybody in the park. It certainly was fun for everybody in the dugout. Then, finally, one of those balls … not only found a hole, but found the roof out there in right field.”
While Rodriguez has started both games since being called up, Patrick Bailey has not started a game since Saturday. Vitello did not provide a definitive answer pregame when asked if the Giants have an everyday catcher, instead noting that the team is “hunting wins as best as we can.”
“It’s not a rule to have an everyday catcher,” Vitello said postgame. “It is a rule to start the game with a catcher. You got people upstairs, people downstairs, people in all kinds of different rooms, their opinions are all valued. We figure out what we want to do each day and, for the most part, we try and treat each day - I’m trying to treat it like it’s Game 7.”
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This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 11:45 PM.