Giants starting pitcher Logan Webb was pulled early in a 3-1 loss to the New York Mets, ending his franchise-record streak of 24 consecutive starts without being tagged with a loss.
NEW YORK -- When the final out was recorded Tuesday night at Citi Field, the Giants had just two hits. But that was not the most surprising part of their side of the box score.
The Giants lost 3-1 in the second game of a doubleheader, and young ace Logan Webb was the one who was charged with the loss. It has been nearly a full calendar year since Webb has taken a loss, a stretch that includes a franchise-record 24 starts -- two of which were postseason gems.
Webb has been dominant for most of that time, turning into one of the best pitchers in baseball. On the rare nights when he was off, the lineup picked him up. There was going to be none of that Tuesday, not with Max Scherzer on the other side.
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Scherzer took a no-hitter into the sixth and the Giants came up short on their one good opportunity in late innings. They lost both games of the doubleheader, and Webb was left wondering what happened. It wasn't that he took the loss, it was how he did it.
Manager Gabe Kapler said Webb didn't have a "good feel" for the baseball in his 3 2/3 innings. Webb deemed it a "weird, long day," but he didn't want to blame the 45-degree weather.
"Yes," he said when asked about not having any feel. "But that's a s--t excuse. It was a bad day."
Webb hasn't had many of them over the last year, and the Giants haven't had many days like this since Kapler took over. They watched Alex Cobb get hurt in a 5-4 walk-off loss in the opener, then managed absolutely nothing against Scherzer.
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Webb gave up six hits and left some balls up, allowing three runs early on. That was enough to put a loss on his record.
"I wish I could have kept it going," he said of the streak. "It's cool, I guess it's an honor to be able to do that."
There have been other nights when Webb wasn't quite right, but he has learned to figure it out midstream. Kapler didn't allow for that against the Mets, pulling Webb after just 75 pitches and turning the night over to a fresh bullpen.
"On a day where he's not his normal, effective self, on a day when he's not feeling the baseball very well, and on a day when we have options that can pick him up like we did in [Sam] Long and [Zach] Littell and [Yunior] Marte and [John] Brebbia, we were going to do that," Kapler said.
The four relievers didn't allow another threat, but the Giants didn't put up much of a fight on the other side. Scherzer struck out 10 and allowed just one hit, an RBI single from Darin Ruf with two outs in the sixth.
In the eighth, Mike Yastrzemski gave a ball a 359-foot ride, but watched in frustration as it died on the track. Yastrzemski said he thought he might have tied the game.
"He really smoked that ball," Kapler said. "I think on a lot of nights that's a home run."
Kapler said he wanted to see Yastrzemski, who is hitting just .167, be rewarded for a good swing, but there would be little of that on the roughest day of the season. The Giants lost two of their first nine games but dropped two in about seven hours. Scherzer didn't get his historic moment, but he still overwhelmed the Giants, delighting a crowd of 27,000.
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"He's Max Scherzer," Webb said. "It's the same thing you see every time he goes out there. I didn't know it was his home debut, so before the game I was like, 'Man, he's probably going to do something pretty cool today.'"
Webb hoped to give Scherzer a greater challenge, but his night ended prematurely. It brought an end to the longest streak in franchise history without a loss. At 24 games, Webb eclipsed Carl Hubbell's previous record by two.
"If you reflect back on who this young pitcher has been since May of last year, he's been one of the best pitchers in baseball, but now this is not just a run. That's who he is, and we expect that performance from him going forward," Kapler said. "Tonight, it's not like, 'Oh it's just the ups and downs of the pitcher.' It's, 'That sucks, because Logan is one of the best pitchers in baseball.' The Mets just beat one of the best pitchers in baseball."
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