SF Giants: Scorekeeping change significantly changes Logan Webb's ERA

A scoring change in Logan Webb's start on August 24th lowered his ERA from 3.33 to 2.99 prior to his start on Tuesday.

The SF Giants defense has doomed them many times this season. By almost every traditional and advanced metric, Giants defenders have been one of the worst groups in MLB. Obviously, San Francisco's pitchers have seen their production suffer because of it. After a scorekeeping change on Tuesday, though, Giants starter Logan Webb's numbers took a drastic improvement.

In Webb's start on August 24th against the Tigers, he allowed six runs across 4.2 innings pitched. Webb had cruised through four no-hit innings on just 57 pitches before hitting a speed bump in the fifth.

Webb allowed a pair of one-out hits and a walk to load the bases with just one out. Webb struck out Riley Greene and was just one out away from escaping the rally unscathed. After getting ahead of Victor Reyes 0-2, Webb induced what looked like an inning-ending groundball to Brandon Crawford. Instead, the ball bounced off the arm of the usually surehanded Crawford and went into centerfield, allowing two runs to score. That opened the floodgates. Webb allowed back-to-back singles following the play before he was lifted for southpaw Thomas Szapucki, who allowed a bases-clearing double. In the end, six runs scored.

It seemed like a pretty clear error on Crawford, but playing in Detroit, the home team's scorekeeper decided to give Reyes a hit. That decision meant all six runs that scored were earned runs on Webb's final line. That changed on Tuesday.

Now that Crawford has been charged with an error for the play, all six runs that scored became unearned. Webb's ERA on the season had jumped to 3.33 following his start on the 24th, but after the change, it dropped to 2.99 (it is now 2.89 after his outing on Tuesday night).

The SF Giants defense has cost them plenty of runs this season, forcing their pitchers into consistently higher-stress situations. Crawford's error on August 24th ultimately cost the team six runs. Now that he has been charged with an error, none of those runs will hurt Webb's overall line.