'I've got to be better': Webb's struggles continue vs. Rox

DENVER -- Fresh off his first career All-Star nod, Logan Webb took the mound at Coors Field on Saturday, hoping to get the Giants back on track after a bumpy start to the second half.

But the ace right-hander wasn’t at his best in his first start in 10 days, giving up four runs over six innings in a 4-3 loss that sealed a series defeat to the Rockies and caused San Francisco (47-52) to sink five games below .500.

“It’s pretty disappointing,” Webb said. “It’s not how you want to start. We’ve just got to keep going, put our heads down and keep trying. There’s nothing else to really do other than that.”

Webb issued a season-high four walks and permitted eight hits, including a go-ahead, two-run homer to Ezequiel Tovar in the fifth inning. After logging a 3.09 ERA over his first 19 starts, Webb has now yielded 11 runs over 11 innings (9.00 ERA) across his last two outings -- and that’s not counting the three runs he surrendered in his lone inning in the All-Star Game on Tuesday.

“I’ve got to be better. I know that,” Webb said. “I’m pretty frustrated with how I’ve been performing the last couple of games.”

Webb didn’t have a good feel for his signature changeup. He used the offspeed pitch only 14% of the time against the Rockies, down from his season average of 32.9%. He compensated by upping the usage of his sweeper (28%) and four-seam fastball (16%), which he said was part of his approach coming into the game.

“I think my changeup was pretty bad today, to be honest,” Webb said. “I think you could see early on that my slider was probably a better pitch, and I was throwing that more. The four-seam was just a part of the game plan. There are guys that are good two-seam and changeup hitters, so I was trying to make adjustments. I thought I stuck to the game plan pretty well. I just made some bad pitches. It’s just kind of how it goes.”

Webb struggled to overcome his first-inning woes, allowing the Rockies to load the bases with no outs on a pair of walks by Charlie Blackmon and Ryan McMahon and a single by Tovar.

Colorado took a 2-0 lead behind Elias Díaz’s RBI groundout and Brenton Doyle’s RBI single. However, catcher Curt Casali helped Webb avoid further damage by throwing out Doyle on a stolen-base attempt to end the inning. The shaky start raised Webb’s first-inning ERA to 5.57 over 21 outings.

“First inning was a little rough,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Sometimes the first inning is the toughest inning for a starter.”

Tyler Fitzgerald, who started at shortstop against Kyle Freeland, single-handedly erased the deficit by homering in the third and delivering a game-tying RBI double in the fifth, but Colorado quickly regained the lead in the bottom half of the inning.

After Sam Hilliard reached on a leadoff single, Melvin called on Webb to incorporate a slide step to minimize the chances of a stolen base. Webb ended up hanging a first-pitch sweeper to Tovar, who crushed it 455 feet out to left field to put the Rockies ahead, 4-2.

“Looking back on it, I probably shouldn’t have done a slide-step slider,” Webb said. “If you ask most pitchers, that’s probably their least favorite pitch to throw when you’re slide stepping. Especially a guy like that who’s hot. He’s hitting the ball well. It just kind of had to be perfect, and it wasn’t. He just hit it far and hit it hard. That’s kind of how things are going right now.”

The Giants got one run back on Wilmer Flores’ two-out RBI double in the sixth, but they were blanked the rest of the way. While they remain on the fringes of contention for a Wild Card spot, they have three teams in front of them -- the D-backs, Pirates and Padres -- and appear to be trending in the wrong direction as they inch closer to the Trade Deadline.

If they keep losing ground, the Giants could end up selling at the Deadline, a possibility president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi didn’t rule out during a radio interview on KNBR on July 11. The following 10 days will go a long way toward determining their fate, setting up a potentially season-defining stretch for the club.

“We’re going to have to win more games,” Melvin said. “We have to come out tomorrow with the mindset that we win tomorrow’s game and move on to the next series and do better.”