The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — Logan Webb secured his spot in Giants lore with far more than his dominance on the mound. He swung for the fences and sent San Francisco to an NL West title at last, without needing to wait for the rival Dodgers’ result on the season’s final day.
The Giants were the majors’ hottest team for months, then had to beat the San Diego Padres 11-4 on Sunday for a franchise-record 107th victory to top the 1904 New York team and hold off pesky defending World Series champion Los Angeles at the end.
Webb (11-3) did it all in leading surprising San Francisco to its first division crown since 2012, delighting a delirious, deafening crowd of 36,901. Buster Posey had an incredible day, too.
The Dodgers won 106 games.
“You’re going to be hard-pressed to see another race like this for quite a while,” Posey said.
Posey raised both arms into the air when Eric Hosmer struck out swinging to end it, and ran out to the mound to hug reliever Dominic Leone.
“The first thing that comes to mind for me is how proud I am of this group and what they accomplished,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler told fans from the field. “Part of the reason that I feel that way is because I think we all knew at the beginning of the season, or even dating back to the beginning of spring training, what the projections are and what the industry sort of thought of us as a club. What I realized is there are some intangibles that those projections and viewpoints failed to take into consideration.”
Webb walked off to a roaring standing ovation when replaced in the eighth after allowing three straight singles. He struck out eight and didn’t walk a batter while pitching seven-plus stellar innings, and also hit a two-run homer in the fifth to clear the fences for the first time in his career — a pretty line drive to left.
“That was way more important,” Webb said, chuckling and sharing that he got the souvenir ball. “That was a special moment for sure. But we all knew the main thing was the pitching today.”
Posey drove in three runs on a pair of singles and got his 1,500th career hit as San Francisco’s division hopes came down to the final day. The Giants clinched the title in Game 162 after losing 3-2 in 10 innings a day earlier as Los Angeles won at night against NL Central champion Milwaukee.
“Well, it turned out that that was a very competitive 107 wins,” Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said. “We needed every one of them.”
The Giants will host the winner of Wednesday night’s wild-card game between the Dodgers and Cardinals in Game 1 of an NL Division Series on Friday at Oracle Park. Kapler hadn’t picked a starter for the opener — saying he would weigh that decision Monday, ready for a tough choice between Webb and Kevin Gausman.
San Francisco wanted to earn it this way to dethrone the reigning champion Dodgers, who could have forced a Monday tiebreaker with a win and a Giants loss. The Dodgers had won the last eight NL West titles since San Francisco took the division nine years ago.
“It was our goal to win the West this year and we knew that could be a kind of lofty goal of where the projections were and where everybody thought we were going to end up,” shortstop Brandon Crawford said.
San Francisco held baseball’s best record for 125 days and won on the last day of the regular season for the first time since 2017. The Giants accomplished that Sunday without first baseman and home run leader Brandon Belt, sidelined by a broken left thumb.
No matter the constant injury challenges or other circ*mstances, “This group always thought we were going to win the game. Always,” Kapler said.
Padres starter Reiss Knehr (1-2) worked three innings in his 12th major league appearance and fifth career start.
The loss was the last disappointment of a disappointing season for the Padres, who with the Dodgers were the hands-down favorites to win the division when the season began six months ago.
Instead, this might have been Jayce Tingler’s final game managing San Diego (79-83), which had high hopes of contending for a championship behind stars Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. and a $175 million payroll. The Padres lost eight of their final nine and finished below .500 for the 10th time in 11 years — they were 37-23 last season — after losing 13 of their last 15 to cap a second-half collapse.
“We never imagined being in this situation. It’s a little bit surprising, shocking, all those things,” Tingler said. “There’s a lot of reasons for it. … It’s miserable, it’s horrible, it’s all those things.”
