Lucas Giolito has no plans to try to top what he did in 2019.
Well, okay, that’s somewhat misleading. Maybe it’s a lot misleading.
Obviously, Giolito wants to get better. He wants to stay the ace of a team that has designs on winning championships of the division and world variety. He wants to return to the All-Star Game and win a Cy Young Award. He very much wants to be better this season than he was last season, and he very much wants to be better in 2021 than he’ll be in 2020, and so on.
But after making a gigantic vault from the pitcher with the worst statistics in baseball to the ace of the South Side staff, the improvement from here on out doesn’t need to be so massive.
“I’m not going out there trying to beat numbers from last year. ‘Oh, I want to have this many less walks or this many more strikeouts,’” Giolito said last week at Camelback Ranch. “A big focus for me is staying healthy and staying on the field. I think I missed four or five starts last year with the injuries. So I definitely have more of a focus on keeping my routine right where I need it to be as far as the health side, taking care of my arm, taking care of my legs, making sure that I’m getting everything I need to stay on the field.
“Just working on the little things, trying to be more consistent, those are the main goals. I’m not trying to go out there and better numbers or anything like that. It’s all about being more consistent and playing confidently every day.”
You hear the cliche, from time to time, that while it’s difficult to get to the top, it’s even more difficult to stay there.
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Giolito got to the top last year, thanks to a complete overhaul of his approach to pitching. It worked wonders, and he lived up to the hype that once accompanied him as the top-ranked pitching prospect in the game. Now, with postseason expectations accompanying the South Siders on their way into the 2020 campaign, Giolito staying on top will be a pretty significant factor in whether the White Sox can reach October for the first time in more than a decade.
Dallas Keuchel and Gio Gonzalez bring two dependable veteran arms with winning experience to the rotation, but they haven’t been brought in to pitch like Nos. 1. Rick Hahn said last week that Keuchel wasn’t acquired to be “a savior” (even if the Jon Lester comps are too tantalizing to ignore) and Gonzalez is here to provide some back-of-the-rotation consistency after 2019’s parade of ineffective options.
Dylan Cease, Reynaldo Lopez and Michael Kopech hold the bulk of the rotation’s fortunes in their hands. Can Cease put his rookie-year struggles behind him? Can Lopez find some consistency after an ugly 2019? Will Kopech be the pitcher who was promised prior to his Tommy John surgery? Those question marks loom large over the White Sox chances at an AL Central crown in 2020.
And so Giolito needs to be a steady presence. And a good one. He needs to deliver the kind of frontline performances he did in 2019 because while all the arms mentioned to this point have the potential to be dominating forces for the White Sox this season, it’s unknown whether they will be or not.
For all his success in 2019, that was one sterling season that followed one horrific season. And those two seasons are the only full ones Giolito has logged as a big leaguer.
It’s time to find out if that transformation is permanent.
“The biggest challenge that anyone that has a really nice season (faces) is to not try to get outside of themselves, stay completely focused on the things that got them to the point that they’re at,” manager Rick Renteria said. “You’re always, ultimately, trying to get better. That will never stop. You’ll never see it. But it’s in degrees.
“He happened to have a huge swing. Now, we want him to just continue to take an incremental pace to any adjustment that he needs to make because once you’re on the path, it usually is just small, incremental, directional things that you need to adjust.”
Giolito being the same pitcher he was in 2019 would be huge for this team. But the competitive nature of someone like him isn’t going to let him settle for doing the same thing over again, even if he’s throwing the idea of passing certain statistical checkpoints out the window early. He’s just 25 years old, after all, and still on the upswing of his development as a big leaguer.
“He’s going to grow as an individual, as a pitcher, it being his third (full) year in the league,” catcher James McCann said. “Just because he had a good year last year doesn’t mean he can’t get better this year. I know there’s certain things he wants to get better at, and I’m excited to see how he does grow this year.”
Getting better doesn’t just mean individually, either. Remember, this is the guy who said in September that if the White Sox don’t make the playoffs in 2020, they won’t be living up to their own expectations.
Giolito, despite his age, has emerged as a leader on this team, something he’s talked about wanting to do for a while now. He doesn’t have the resume of someone like Keuchel, but he was doing the same things as his new mate at the top of the rotation, having in-depth chats with Cease and Kopech about pitching in the early weeks of spring training. It was a flashback to last season, when Giolito was often spotted during Cease’s starts acting as another pitching coach in the dugout.
“I feel like I’m in a nice, unique spot where I’m kind of right in the middle. I’m not like a super young rookie-type guy anymore. I have a good amount of experience,” Giolito said. “But at the same time, I have a few guys in our rotation that I can look up to and ask whatever questions that come to my mind, watch how they work, continue to learn from them.
“In this game, you have to keep on learning until the day you retire. You never want to be satisfied or settle, and that’s kind of how I view it. I think by kind of embodying that mindset with my actions, with how I speak to other guys on our staff, that’s a good way to set an example.
“For me, I just want to make sure everyone’s communicating, everyone’s close, and at the same time, having fun while trying to improve every day.”
The White Sox will need Giolito at his best to get to where they want to be in 2020. Thankfully for them, he seems to have no intention of doing anything but moving forward this season.
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