SAN FRANCISCO -- If Joey Bart would have looked up into the seats during what ended up being his final game of the Arizona Fall League season, he would have seen a familiar face sitting a dozen rows behind the third base dugout.
Logan Webb, a right-hander who is not far behind Bart on the Giants' prospect list, stopped by as a fan to watch a few innings of a Fall League game that he very easily could have been playing in under different circumstances. Webb, 22, is exactly the type of pitcher teams often send to the AFL in September and October. Instead, he was in Arizona recovering from what ended up being a long stint in the big leagues. The Giants didn't need him to make up any innings, because Webb arrived in the big leagues in August and never looked back, making eight consecutive starts to end the season.
There were flashes of brilliance, but also plenty of bumps. Webb finished with a 5.22 ERA as a rookie but his FIP (4.12) was much lower, and he ended on a high note. Webb allowed six earned runs over his final three starts and held opponents to a .178 average.
"I hate using the word 'learning' or 'developing' but it is part of it," he said on this week's Giants Insider Podcast. "I would say I am happy with some things, but also unhappy about certain things, and that's something I'm going to take into this offseason and learn from. I'll come into spring training like it's a fresh start."
Webb means that in multiple ways. He is eager to continue putting a suspension for a positive performance-enhancing substance test behind him, and he plans to train in Arizona this winter to prepare for a real opportunity to win a starting job this spring.
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On this week's podcast, Webb opened up a bit about the suspension that cost him 80 games. He called it a "terrible time of my life" and described how he spent months thinking about what he might say when the news became public. Webb has never backed away from his original statement about the test result, but over time he learned to move on. He said teammates, family members and friends helped him realize what he had to do.
"You have a chance to do something special," Webb said of the message. "Once I finally learned that, I was able to maybe move past it and come back better than I was before."
For more from Webb on his up-and-down year, what he learned from pitching behind Madison Bumgarner, facing famous big leaguers and more, stream the Giants Insider Podcast here or download it on iTunes here.
