On Friday, the Giants introduced a five-year, $90 million contract extension with star right-hander Logan Webb. The 26-year-old Webb got here to nationwide consideration through the 2021 NLCS, by which he allowed a single run throughout two begins towards the Dodgers, placing out 17 and strolling one over 14 2/3 innings. Across 2021 and 2022, Webb was twelfth in baseball in pitcher WAR, one spot behind Gerrit Cole, and twentieth in ERA amongst pitchers with a minimum of 200 innings pitched, one spot forward of Shane Bieber.
Webb was on account of attain free company after the 2025 season. This contract will purchase out his two remaining arbitration years for a complete of $20 million, then pay him $23 million, $23 million, and $24 million from 2026 to 2028. It’s a deal indicative of Webb’s particular standing within the Giants’ group, and it may nonetheless be an infinite cut price for the staff.
The Giants of the early 2010s had one of many strongest staff identities in all of baseball, and Webb’s emergence in 2021 signified the beginning of the period that may succeed the heyday of the title-winning core. The solely holdover from the World Series-winning years is Brandon Crawford, who won’t nonetheless be round himself had he not posted a profession yr out of nowhere in 2021 on the age of 34. New blood has taken over, and the Giants have remade themselves in an fascinating vogue.
After near-misses at signing Aaron Judge and Carlos Correa this offseason, the Giants have one of the crucial egalitarian wage buildings in baseball. They have 10 gamers — 11 when you fold Webb’s extension onto his present one-year, $4.5 million wage — on contracts price $10 million per yr, however none on contracts with an AAV of $20 million or extra. The default mode of constructing a contender is to signal a couple of superstars to massively profitable contracts and fill out the remainder of the roster with pre-arbitration children. The best bargains are to be discovered on the very prime and really backside of the league’s payroll checklist.
The Giants, in contrast, have operated virtually solely within the treacherous waters of second-tier free brokers: Michael Conforto, Mitch Haniger, Sean Manaea, Ross Stripling. One method to interpret San Francisco’s roster is {that a} staff of above-average gamers will produce an above-average win-loss report. And whereas extra star-reliant groups might be thrown into disaster by one or two accidents, the Giants have power in depth.
Another benefit to this type of roster is that particular person gamers might be modified out simply in the event that they underperform or an improve comes obtainable. The Giants are the fifth-oldest staff in baseball, and their estimated payroll of $194 million ranks eleventh. But till Webb’s extension, that they had $0 dedicated to their payroll past 2025. Only 4 different groups may say the identical, and two of these — the Reds and Athletics — are solely technically main league golf equipment at this level.
The Giants are actually dedicated to Webb three years longer than they’re dedicated to some other participant. The ensures of $23 million and $24 million in Webb’s free agent years are the three best single-season ensures on San Francisco’s books at present; in actual fact, no Giants participant has ever made $23 million in a season earlier than. (Buster Posey, Matt Cain, Barry Zito, and Barry Bonds all topped out between $20 million and $22.18 million of their highest-paid years. And the five-year, $90 million determine should be fortunate in San Francisco, because the Giants had beforehand signed Bonds and Hunter Pence to contracts of that size and worth.)
All that is to say that the Giants appear to suppose Webb is particular. The Giants have a comparatively flat wage construction not as a result of the staff is unwilling to spend on precept, however as a result of they’ve been unable to both develop or appeal to the sort of star gamers who go for $300 million in whole worth. Missing out on Judge and the breakdown of the Correa contract is unlucky, however it’s vital to emphasize how a lot of an outlier Webb has been.
From 2006 to 2009, the Giants spent consecutive top-10 picks on Tim Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey, and Zack Wheeler. Since 2010, solely two gamers the Giants drafted within the prime 10 rounds have made an All-Star staff: Joe Panik and Bryan Reynolds. So, not a variety of profit to the Giants there now. Webb is the perfect homegrown Giants participant since Crawford and Brandon Belt, who debuted in 2011. Barring an sudden MVP-type season by somebody like Conforto, Webb is the Giants’ greatest participant at any place proper now, and positively their greatest beginning pitcher.
In extending Webb now, the Giants keep away from the sort of unpleasantness that Corbin Burnes skilled in his arbitration case with the Brewers. They hold Webb underneath contract by way of his age-31 season, and at an inexpensive worth. Webb would have needed to wait one other two seasons after this with a view to take a look at the market after his age-28 season. The going price for a pitcher of Webb’s high quality at that age, proper now, is 5 or 6 years at between $20 million and $25 million a yr. And given the flurry of post-lockout free agent exercise we noticed this previous winter, that worth may effectively be on the rise.
So the Giants locked of their greatest pitcher for 2026 to 2028 at 2022 costs, they usually did so with out having to decide to paying him a star’s wage by way of his mid-30s. The solely draw back from their perspective is the danger of regression or harm, the chance of which approaches 100% for a younger pitcher over a given six-year time-frame. Such is the character of the enterprise.
If groups are proper to concern the long-term uncertainty of pitchers, the pitchers themselves should be much more involved. After all, a couple of misplaced tens of tens of millions is of little concern to somebody who’s wealthy sufficient to personal a baseball staff; Webb will greater than triple his profession earnings together with his $4.5 million wage in 2023. That’s hardly sufficient to set him up for all times in case of (burns incense, touches wooden, faces the solar and asks for divine safety) one thing like thoracic outlet syndrome.
This imbalance of threat is an insidious structural issue baked into the present system of baseball economics. Teams leverage it to get their gamers to signal below-market extensions on a regular basis. Is Webb’s contract below-market? Sure, even considering that it consists of two seasons by which his wage could be depressed by arbitration. But all issues thought of, he’s carried out fairly effectively:
Logan Webb’s FA Years vs. Some Other Guys
I feel Webb is an absolute killer, however he’s nonetheless constructing a observe report; he’s solely made 30 begins as soon as, and the sum whole of his particular person accolades quantity to at least one fourth-place Cy Young vote. And in comparison with what guys like him had been getting by way of 2022, he did effectively even accounting for the hometown low cost.
With that stated, the chance price for Webb within the subsequent three years is important. Carlos Rodón’s contract means that the 2022-23 offseason actually did reset the market, however we received’t know for positive till we see what the likes of Aaron Nola, Julio Urías, and Blake Snell get in free company this coming winter. It’s additionally not unreasonable to count on that Webb will be part of the hallowed interior circle of perennial Cy Young contenders.
Webb definitely entered this season as a darkish horse Cy Young candidate, and his bloated ERA by way of three begins owes much less to any sort of collapse than an early-season glut of residence runs allowed. But that’s what occurs when a pitcher runs into Aaron Judge after which Max Muncy, who’s higher than Judge when he’s enjoying in San Francisco. Webb’s HR/FB price will drop again beneath 30% quickly sufficient.
Regardless, in a best-case state of affairs, Webb will end this contract a month shy of his thirty second birthday feeling delicate disappointment at having made $90 million as a substitute of $120 million and even $150 million; and even then, he’ll nonetheless have a couple of years of high-level efficiency left with which to barter on the free agent market. In a worst-case state of affairs, his youngsters will nonetheless develop up wealthy.
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com