8-5-2025 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X
Following late-game heroics last night, the Pirates have now taken all 4 games against the Giants this season, including last week when they faced today’s starter, Logan Webb, who mowed down the Pirates in that outing, striking out 11 over 5.2 innings where he allowed 1 run off 5 hits, 4 walks and a hit batter.
Webb is able to rack up strikeouts at a solid rate but mostly is looking to put the ball on the ground with a well above-average 52.7% ground-ball rate led by his mix of pitches and reliance on locating them low in the zone with downward break. I covered his mix previously but today, we are going to examine one specific pitch that was most effective for the 28-year old veteran: his changeup.
In that outing last week, Webb leaned heavily on his changeup low in the zone comprising 42 of 109 pitches and generating 11 of his 16 whiffs off the pitch. The hit batter came against the changeup that got away from him but many of the pitches were dropping just under the strike zone and getting bad looking swings-and-misses by Pirate hitters.
Overall on the season, it has been an effective offering for him as he uses it as his primary pitch versus lefties while mixing the sinker/sweeper combo to keep the ball low and generate ground-balls.
His changeup is far and away his best pitch with an opponent batting average of .209 and slugging percentage of .297 – both the best among his arsenal – while his 35.9% K rate on the offering ranks third highest among pitchers with at least 150 plate appearances using the pitch.
On the other side of that, however, is the reality that when opponents do make contact on the pitch, they make sure it’s solid as his 47.8% hard hit rate against his changeup is the highest among that same qualifying pool of pitchers.
While Webb hasn’t surrendered any home runs off the pitch, the average exit velocity of 92.2 MPH (highest among his arsenal) and 0 degree launch angle suggests that the right type of hitter who can drop the barrel down with the movement of the ball could potentially be the first to ring the bell on Webb.
Nick Gonzales got on-base twice last week against Webb’s changeup – once via the HBP and once with a 106 MPH single to center, which was the hardest hit ball of the game. Given Webb’s overall success with the pitch last time around, this team needs to be prepared for him to break it out again and try to learn from their failures – as well as Nick’s successes – against the offering to find success this time around.
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