Lucas Giolito knows when things are going wrong. It’s fixing the problems that are the next step in the development of one of the White Sox most promising young pitchers.
After showing signs of improvement in his last outing against the St. Louis Cardinals, things again went poorly Tuesday night against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He left with a lead, but that was about the only silver lining, as he lasted just four innings after watching his pitch count soar to 98. The most revolting development: After the White Sox spotted him four runs in the bottom of the first, he immediately coughed up four in the top of the second.
Giolito wasn’t sugarcoating anything or trying to find the positive needle in a negative haystack after the game.
“The fact that they gave me four runs in the first inning and I went out and gave up four is unacceptable,” he said. “To throw that many pitches in that few innings, it’s just not getting the job done as a starting pitcher. I should be going five, at least. We’re big on shutdown innings here. If we put up some runs on the board, especially more than one or two, you go out there, you shut down. I didn’t do that. It was just not a good night.”
It was obviously a disappointing outcome after a quality start in his last outing. And Giolito might actually want to consider himself lucky he made it as far as he did. That nightmarish top of the second went like this: double, hit batter, strikeout, single, fielder’s choice, walk, double, single, only ending when Nicky Delmonico threw a runner out at the plate.
“Once things start to happen during an inning, I’ll start to speed up,” Giolito said. “That’s when I don’t allow myself to make that adjustment that I’m always working on. I don’t know, just missing a ton of spots, deep counts, walking guys. None of that’s good. That’s stuff I need to clean up.”
Obviously no one is expecting Giolito to be a finished product yet. Tuesday’s start was the seventh of the 2018 season, matching the total he had at the major league level in 2017. But the two seasons have been completely different to this point. In those seven starts at the end of last year, he dazzled, turning in a 2.38 ERA. Through his first seven starts of 2018, he’s got a 7.25 ERA and 25 walks (the most in the American League) compared to just 21 strikeouts.
MLB
Manager Rick Renteria was right when he said that Giolito is still going through the developmental process, and it’s quite possible that these will be the learning moments that turn Giolito into a very good major league pitcher. But certainly Giolito is getting drastically different results now than they did at the end of last summer and during a dominant spring.
“He’s still in a situation where he’s continuing to learn who he is, and these hiccups are going to occur,” Renteria said. “For him, it’ll be something to learn from and build on, and we’re very confident that what he will ultimately become will be something pretty good. But right now he’s still working through it.”