SAN FRANCISCO — With a smack of his glove and swift stride back to the dugout, Logan Webb celebrated a new career milestone.

“I told (catcher Patrick Bailey) before the game,” Webb said, “I’m only six away. But I’m not counting.”

The Giants ace wasn’t his most efficient, nor his most effective, against the Diamondbacks on Monday night. But, like he has all season, Webb reached into his back pocket and found a weapon when he needed it most.

Four runs were already on his pitching line and a potential fifth was standing on third with two outs in the fifth, as Arizona’s No. 5 hitter, Adrian Del Castillo, stepped into the box. The count ran full, and Webb fired a changeup on the outside corner that darted away from the left-handed batter.

Castillo offered and came up empty. Strike three, the 200th of the season for the ground-ball savant turned strikeout artist. A congratulatory message flashed across the jumbotron, the 26,699 on hand rose to their feet and Webb made his way off the mound, offering little acknowledgment of the feat.

But he knew. Webb added one more punchout to finish with seven, requiring 110 pitches to complete six innings, and earned the win in an 11-5 trouncing to open their series against Arizona.

“Obviously I knew about it,” Webb said. “But the goal is to win everyday and try to win every game we can. I’m just happy we were able to do that.”

Webb walked off the mound as the National League leader in strikeouts — 201 total — and the first Giants pitcher to reach the round number since Carlos Rodón did it in 2022. By the end of the month, he will all but certainly become the first in the franchise since Madison Bumgarner to do so while also pitching 200 innings.

“I’m super fired up for him, super proud,” Bailey said. “He works his butt off. He goes out there every fifth day, no matter how he feels, and gives us all he’s got. To be able to accomplish that goal for him, it’s really special.”

When he walked off the mound, Webb wasn’t in line for the win. But that changed in a hurry, as the Giants loaded the bases to begin the bottom of the sixth and hung a five-spot on the scoreboard by the time it was over, handing a commanding lead over to the bullpen.

Paired with the Mets’ 1-0 loss to the Phillies, the win pulled the Giants (73-71) within three games of the final wild card spot. They had been 7½ games back as recently as August 22 before going on to win 12 of their past 15 games.

“I think we’re trying to stay away from actually focusing too much on that and just trying to continue to play well,” said manager Bob Melvin. “It’s a little different strategy than before. We were in a really good position and all of a sudden we’re completely out of it. It didn’t look like there was much on the horizon for us, and then all of a sudden you go on a run like this and you put yourself back in position.”

Christian Koss doubled in a pair to begin the scoring in the fifth, and Heliot Ramos put an exclamation point on the rally with a 435-foot tank that landed midway up the bleachers in left-center field. Ramos’ homer, his 17th of the season, was the Giants’ third of the game, adding on to a pair of souvenirs Jung Hoo Lee and Dominic Smith provided to fans atop the arcade in right field.

Lee, in the second, and Smith, in the third, answered for Arizona’s runs in the top half of each inning, before the Giants broke it open in the sixth. Matt Chapman added on with a solo shot in the seventh, and Patrick Bailey joined the power party in the eighth.

The Giants’ five home runs set a season-high, their most in a game at Oracle Park since 2021. It was also the third time this season they have slugged four in one game — all occurring in the past two weeks.

Asked to sum up their sudden power surge, all Bailey could say was, “They say hitting’s contagious, and you’re kind of seeing it right now.”

“It’s really fun to watch,” added Webb, for whom the run support is a welcome change of pace. “The guys are feeding off each other. … We had a rough stretch for a while in every facet of what we were doing — pitching, hitting, defense — it wasn’t the way we wanted to play baseball. Now we’re playing it the right way.”

Webb breezed through the first inning on nine pitches but needed 31 to complete the second, issuing a pair of walks that both came around to score after Koss flubbed a hard chopper up the middle that would have been the third out. Arizona added another two-out run after Webb allowed a leadoff single to Ketel Marte to start the third and couldn’t put away Blaze Alexander, who snuck a nubber past a diving Smith at first base with two down.

The occasional piece of soft contact sneaking through the infield is a built-in part of Webb’s game as a sinkerballer who coaxes ground balls at one of the highest rates in the league. The ability to turn to the strikeout to recover from those is a new wrinkle Webb added this season.

“I think it’s just the execution,” Bailey said of the reason behind Webb’s uptick in whiffs. “I feel like this year he’s been really dialed in about locating the pitches. The four-seam has been really big with two strikes. It takes some pressure off the changeup. The sweeper’s been really good, too, to both sides.”

The biggest key, Bailey said, was count leverage. Webb’s 69.5% first-pitch strike rate trails only the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal.

“You strike more guys out when you give them some strikes,” Bailey said. “He does a really good job of that.”

Previously, the most batters Webb had fanned in a season was 194 in 2023, but those came in a major-league-leading 216 innings. He was sitting on that number entering his start Monday night, at only 178⅔ innings. He has shouldered the majors’ largest workload each of the past two seasons and is doing so again this year, at a league-leading 184⅔ frames, but now finds himself atop a new leaderboard.

“(He’s) getting better, pitch-mix wise,” Melvin marveled before the game. “Look at how his pitches work now, all the different ones, that’s why you’re seeing all these strikeouts now. … That really wasn’t him before. Now, he can get strikeouts when he needs to, ground balls when he needs to. He’s just a better pitcher now and continues to get better.”

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