San Francisco's Season Looks Like a Tear-Down. Logan Webb's August Doesn't Read the Standings.
San Francisco is 52-75, on pace for one of the worst seasons in franchise history, walking into Fenway Park against a Red Sox team six games over .500 with real September baseball still in front of it. Nothing about tonight should look competitive for the Giants — except that the pitcher they're sending to the mound has been arguably the best in the sport for the last month.
Logan Webb's ERA in August sits at 0.90 against a 3.50 mark for the season, and this isn't a case of a mediocre pitcher running hot — his ground-ball rate (87.3%) is already one of the most extreme in the league, and his season-long xERA (3.62) tracks almost exactly with his actual ERA, meaning there was no hidden luck propping up the numbers even before this stretch started. When a pitcher who already wasn't getting lucky turns it up another notch, that's not a hot streak asking to end. That's a pitcher pitching better.
Sonny Gray takes the ball for Boston off a tidy 2.65 ERA of his own. The market, for its part, still isn't buying what Webb's August says: San Francisco's price has drifted from +144 to +167 over the past day, a 23-cent move against the Giants even as their own starter has been this good, while the total has come in only half a run, 8 to 7.5. The board still sees a last-place team walking into Fenway. It just doesn't see the pitcher on the mound.