Kurtenbach: Logan Webb showed the new-look Giants the way forward. Can this team follow their leader?

SAN FRANCISCO — Logan Webb did what aces should do on Wednesday.

After the Giants dropped the first two games of their home series against the Dodgers — in front of a not-so-partisan Oracle Park crowd — Webb said his team was “embarrassed.” It turned Wednesday’s contest into a must-win game.

And Webb delivered, throwing six shutout innings in a 4-1 Giants win, despite a 31-pitch first frame that led manager Bob Melvin to question if he could even make it to the second half of the game.

The Giants might be 1.5 games back of the final Wild Card spot in the National League as of Thursday morning, but having not defeated one of the league’s two best teams (the Dodgers and Phillies) in the nine games prior to Wednesday was the defining factor of the season to date.

Add in the team’s absurd string of injuries, and a sub-.500 record overall, and you have a team that had lost every ounce of its preseason optimism and was looking down the pipe at months of maintained mediocrity and the malaise — from the fans and in the clubhouse — that comes along with it.

But for one night, momentum was, indeed, as good as the day’s starting pitcher.

“To give us six shutout innings — that’s probably his best work of the year,” Melvin said.

No, one win in 10 doesn’t change much, but it was sure nice to see the team’s only standout player — Webb — give the team exactly what it needed, and for his teammates — many of which just joined the big-league team — back him up.

Webb was caught by Curt Casali on Wednesday. The catcher is no stranger to Webb or the Giants, but he was literally in a different organization — and different league altogether — the day prior. Casali had two hits for the Iowa Cubs in Syracuse on Tuesday, opted out of his minor-league deal with that organization, and signed a big-league deal with the Giants on Wednesday, catching a cross-country flight and San Francisco’s ace in 24 hours.

Given how things have been going for the Giants roster as of late, that all seemed pretty normal.

Against a Dodgers team whose top five hitters should all be All-Stars this season, the Giants started five players on Wednesday who were not on this team’s roster when the calendar flipped to May.

While a youth infusion might be exactly what this organization needs to establish a better future — on Wednesday, Luis Matos robbed a home run and had two hits, including an RBI single; Heliot Ramos added an RBI double — it’s hardly an ideal situation when you play the Dodgers.

Luckily they had Webb on the mound.

Webb isn’t a conventional ace. He’s not a big strikeout guy, blowing away hitters with 100-mile-per-hour heat. He plays to a defense. He can throw 110 pitches in an outing, or, as Melvin said after Wednesday’s game, even more.

He’s also the only player on this roster with a guaranteed contract for the 2028 season. That makes him the foundation of this team.

And he was able to hold the weight combined weight of the moment — yes, even in mid-May — and the chaos of the roster, on Wednesday.

What’s even more impressive is how he did it.

The Dodgers worked Webb the last time he faced them, on April 2.

Los Angeles had a specific game plan for the Giants’ ace in that game — they sat on his best and most-thrown pitch, his change-up.

Webb could pound the zone with as many sinkers as he wanted, the Dodgers’ elite hitters would foul them off until he threw the changeup. And if that pitch was thrown low, the Dodgers let it fall out for a ball, forcing Webb to put it in the zone, where — even with all its movement — it was crushed.

So on Wednesday, Webb didn’t throw the changeup. He only used the pitch 15 times.

It was a refreshing approach in a league where there are a lot of throwers simply tossing their best “stuff”, no matter what, and not a lot of pitchers, who have some craft to their game.

Webb was hardly dominant on Wednesday, but the ends justify the means.

“Make them adjust,” Webb said. “That’s probably the toughest lineup in baseball — [they] made me work… It’s no secret I’ve sorta struggled against these guys.”

“Find a way to get through five or six — that’s what my thought process was…Grind through this outing.”

On a team where roster churn is something close to an organizational philosophy — one that’s being heavily put to the test at the moment — Webb became a de facto leader when he signed his five-year contract before last season.

But he has taken that role and expidiously grown into it. There’s no questioning his leadership now.

He can rally the troops with his voice, sure, but what’s more important is what he does on the field. And Wednesday, against the best lineup in baseball — a team that worked him over last time out — and in a must-win game with a bunch of practical strangers around him, he found a way to win. That’s leadership.

Was it pretty? No. Webb had only five swings and misses all game.

Does it matter?

Also no.

He was able to grind through it.

The rest of this Giants roster needs to follow suit and grind out more wins than losses over the next month or so.

It’s a grim outlook, sure, but that’s all this team has right now.

Perhaps being the grittiest gang of no-goods in the National League West — the team that everyone hates playing because their only goal is to find a way to score one more run than the other team, by any means necessary — is the proper identity for the 2024 Giants. Drop any sense of ego, play some small ball, and put out an unattractive but winning product.

Heaven knows whatever their mantra was for the beginning of the season wasn’t working anyway.

Do that long enough and maybe the calvary of injured players can come back and help this team win with some style.

Or the Giants can stay on the dirt road all the way to the end of the season. This team has the defense and bullpen to back it.

But less than two months into the season, the fact is the Giants are in a position where pragmatism is necessary. They need to latch on to whatever works.

Webb might have shown the Giants the way on Wednesday.

Let’s see if this team — a dramatically different one than the version that started the season — can follow the leader.