SF Giants beat reporter alludes to 'physical limitations' for staff ace

The SF Giants rely on starting pitcher Logan Webb heavily. He has been the workhorse for the pitching staff all year, but a Giants beat reporter has alluded to physical limitations that could potentially affect Webb the rest of this season.

Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area alluded to these physical limitations after Webb's last outing against the Chicago White Sox. Webb pitched 8 innings only giving up 2 earned runs in the outing and had amassed 93 pitches in those 8 innings. After the bullpen coughed up the game in the 9th, there were some who questioned why Webb did not go out for the 9th since he was pitching well and he regularly goes over 100 pitches in his starts.

Well, Pavlovic gave a very cryptic answer to this on the Giants Talk podcast following the White Sox series. You can listen to him say this at the 8:15 mark in the video for the podcast linked here. He said, "Logan Webb leads the National League in innings by 18. He has carried a heavy workload...he has been sick, there are some other physical things going on with him that I don't think he wants to get into in the middle of a season. He was on a pitch count today." Then, in the most recent podcast, Pavlovic again referred to Webb's "physical limitations" at the 13:28 mark.

SF Giants ace Logan Webb reportedly has 'physical limitations'

Because Pavlovic does not go into specifics, it really leaves one to wonder what limitations he is referring to. Clearly, they are not preventing Webb from pitching since he is scheduled to start tonight's contest against the Milwaukee Brewers. But perhaps whatever these limitations are will simply prevent Webb from going an extra inning if his pitch count is already pretty high. This may just be precautionary so they do not overextend Webb and wear him out.

Webb is leading all of baseball in innings pitched with 172 and 2/3 innings. He has been a guy who you can count on for over 200 innings in a season for several years now. Perhaps he is simply dealing with some arm fatigue as a result of working deep into games so often. Of course, the key downside is that Webb will be relied on even more with Robbie Ray's hamstring injury. The rest of the rotation, Webb included, is going to be under a lot of pressure to pitch deep into games especially since their bullpen has been very taxed as well.

Sometimes we can take Webb for granted with his ability to go deep into games. It is only natural that at a certain point he may get tired or may have some "physical limitations" like Pavlovic has said. Whatever they are, we have to hope they do not prevent Webb from being effective for the rest of the season as the Giants cling to a sliver of hope that they can reach the postseason.