These Giants vets have more to play for down the stretch

BALTIMORE -- Though the Giants have faded from the National League playoff hunt, they can still impact the postseason picture in a meaningful way. Take for example their unusual mid-week trip to Camden Yards, which concluded with a 5-3 walk-off loss to the Orioles in Thursday’s series finale.

San Francisco still took two of three from the wobbling Orioles, playing spoiler right up until the moment Anthony Santander socked a walk-off, two-run homer off Ryan Walker. The Giants then boarded a plane to Kansas City, where they’ll spend the weekend facing another American League Wild Card contender. A three-game set in Arizona follows that, again with postseason implications.

“We just want to finish up strong,” manager Bob Melvin said this week. “We’re trying to get some guys in there to develop, but there is always that balance of also getting the best lineup out there.”

All of which is to say, the Giants still have more than enough to play for over the season’s final week-plus. Their loss Thursday also highlighted a couple of veterans with individual motivations to finish the year strong, too:

Logan Webb
Goal: Get to 200 innings, again
Webb’s quest for his second consecutive 200-inning season came up just short Thursday, limited by a difficult 41-pitch fourth inning to finish with five innings of three-run ball in the latest of a line of frustrating September starts.

“I just have to do better,” Webb said. “That’s what it comes down to.”

Melvin said this week there aren’t any plans to shut down any of the Giants’ starters, the implication being that Webb would make his final start of the year whether he reached the 200-innings plateau on Thursday or not. Webb needed 6 1/3 innings to hit the milestone coming into the day. He now needs 1 1/3 frames more to reach 200. If he gets it, he’ll be the only pitcher in the Majors to do so the past two seasons.

As it stands, Webb is 12-10 with a 3.58 ERA and an MLB-best 198 2/3 innings on the year. That is his highest ERA in a full-length season since 2019.

“I felt like I had good stuff but just not getting the job done,” Webb said. “It’s frustrating because that’s how I’ve felt pretty much the whole season.”

Michael Conforto
Goal: Finish hot ... and healthy
A free agent at season’s end, Conforto has every reason to want to finish his current two-year deal with San Francisco on a high note, and he might be finding something of a mini-groove here in mid-September. His two-run homer Thursday off Zach Eflin was classic Conforto, a 113.2 mph topspin liner he snuck over the right-center field wall for his second in as many days.

“Everything feels good,” Conforto said this week. “I feel like my timing is good. I’m trying to stay in the middle of the field and I think that’s really helped.”

Conforto missed three games earlier in the month due to a minor bout of oblique soreness, and he spent three weeks on the injured list in May due to a hamstring issue. Other than that, he’s proven healthy and is on track to finish the season with his most games played since 2019. If nothing else, he’s proven -- durability-wise -- to have moved past the right shoulder surgery that preceded his first free agency and cost him the entire 2022 season.

Whether that is enough for Conforto to cash in on the open market remains to be seen. It’s a complicated case. His 18 homers are his most since ‘19, when Conforto clocked a career-high 33 for the Mets to cap a three-year run where he averaged 29 home runs per season. But his overall production -- he’s hitting .234 with a .749 OPS this year -- remains down compared to that time.

And yet, Conforto’s underlying metrics tell a more optimistic story. Conforto is hitting the ball as hard -- 90.1 mph average exit velocity, per Statcast -- as he has since 2016, when he was 23 years old. His bat speed ranks in the 80th percentile league-wide, and his barrel percentage has jumped from the 44th percentile last year to the 76th percentile this season. And his .294 batting average and .906 OPS against left-handed pitching are both career highs

“He’s having much better at-bats, hitting the ball hard,” Melvin said. “We’ve seen him go through some really good stretches this year and he seems to be swinging well right now.”