Logan Webb loses no-hit bid in 6-run inning as Giants fail to sweep Tigers

Logan Webb wasn’t able to finish the fifth inning Wednesday afternoon, and the Giants also failed to complete a two-game sweep of the last-place Tigers.

San Francisco fell one game under .500 (61-62) and had to settle for a split after a 6-1 loss, in which Detroit ended Webb’s no-hit bid and chased him from the game all in one six-run frame.

MLB.com was preparing its no-hitter alert for the Giants-Tigers game Tuesday as Webb took the mound to begin the fifth inning. Webb had breezed through the first four frames without allowing a hit. He had struck out five and issued a pair of walks as the Tigers’ lone base runners.

By the end of the first inning, Webb had already used his slider and his change-up to ring up two Tigers hitters, an encouraging sign coming after his last start, when he allowed five runs (three earned) and didn’t record a strikeout for the first time in his career.

It all unraveled — no-hit bid, the shutout bid, even Webb’s ability to complete the fifth inning — and with little fault of his own. Detroit strung together five hits and a walk to knock Webb from the game and tag him with six earned runs.

Webb hadn’t allowed more than four earned runs in a start before this month, but he has since done it twice. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this month Webb also exceeded his previous career high in innings (148⅓, last season).

However, those workload concerns should be somewhat assuaged by the fact that in between his two six-run starts, Webb has also twirled eight shutout innings in one start and tossed seven innings of two-run ball in another.

The Tigers’ first two hits off Webb — with one out in the fifth inning — had respective expected batting averages of .250 and .070 and traveled a total of 14 feet in the air. The first, from Jeimer Candelario, found the left-field grass by beating the defense’s overshift, and the second ended with Tucker Barnhart on second base (and Cadelario on third) after his high chopper bounced over the glove of first baseman Wilmer Flores.

Barnhart and Candelario scored the first two of the six runs when a line drive from Victor Reyes short-hopped Brandon Crawford, who threw his arms up after failing to make the play. It could have been the third out of the inning after Webb struck out the previous batter, but was followed by three more hits that led to four more runs.

“Obviously that was a turning point in the game, so I wish I could’ve been able to make that play or get in front of it and knock it down,” Crawford told reporters in Detroit. “There were a lot of factors that made it a tough play.

“Initially off the bat, I thought it was going be a line drive I could catch in the air. It had some top spin. The ball sank pretty hard at the last minute. I noticed that and tried to drop step to get myself in good position and it hopped up higher than I thought it was going to.”

On the flip side, the Giants came 90 feet away from plating runners in three innings — and about six feet away in another. In addition to stranding runners on third base in the first, fourth and fifth, LaMonte Wade Jr. nearly got the Giants on the board in the third with a well-hit fly ball to center field.

In 21 of 30 ballparks, including Oracle Park, it would have been a home run, but in the spacious confines of Comerica Park, it was merely a 414-foot flyout.

Mike Yastrzemski, Joey Bart and Tommy La Stella strung together three straight two-out hits in the seventh for the Giants’ only run. Otherwise, the Giants went 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position and left 10 men on base.

One of those failed scoring opportunities was set up by Yastrzemski stealing second after blooping a base hit into left field (his first of two hits, coming two games after he snapped the longest hitless streak of his career).

Yastrzemski’s steal of second was the Giants’ 28th consecutive successful stolen base attempt, the longest in franchise history and the fourth-longest of any major league team since 1995.

Yastrzemski is responsible for five of the 28 steals during the streak; Austin Slater leads the team with nine, followed by Thairo Estrada (seven) and Luis González (five), while Joey Bart and Joc Pederson have each contributed one.

The streak dates back to June 17, which might be a good sign that successful stolen base attempts alone don’t lead to team success. Since they were last caught stealing, the Giants have gone 25-35 and dropped from nine games above .500 to one game underwater.

Wednesday’s loss snapped a streak of eight straight wins by the Giants against American League opponents. While a handful of clubs have collected eight-game interleague winning streaks, only one has extended it to nine: the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates.

Good news for the Giants: there are more interleague matchups in their future. With 2023’s new, balanced schedule released Wednesday, San Francisco will face each AL team once per year — a total of 46 interleague games per season.