Over the past few seasons, the righty has seen both great highs and terrible lows on the mound. You may also remember his granddad.
On Friday, the Red Sox allegedly reached an agreement with Lucas Giolito on a two-year contract worth $38.5 million, marking their first significant free-agency move to date.
Giolito, 29, signs with Boston in an attempt to strengthen its starting rotation following a comparatively quiet 2023 campaign from its starters. Due to recent setbacks, the 2019 All-Star, who may have the most upside in the Red Sox rotation in 2024, signed a multi-option short-term contract in the peak of his career.
The newest Red Sox pitcher is the subject of the following five things.
From 2019 to 21, he was among the American League’s top pitchers.
2019 saw Giolito, who began his career in the Nationals farm system and was moved to the White Sox a few months after making his Major League debut in 2016, begin to realize his full potential as one of the game’s prospects.
Giolito enjoyed a career season in 2019 after a difficult 2018 campaign in which he finished 10-13 with a 6.13 ERA. In 176 2/3 innings pitched, he was 14-9 across 29 starts, recording a 3.41 ERA, 228 strikeouts, and a 1.064 WHIP. That season, he pitched two shutouts and three complete games, which set league records, and finished in the top five in the AL in terms of ERA, WHIP, hits per nine innings, and strikeouts per nine innings. That year, Giolito finished sixth in the AL Cy Young voting and received his first All-Star nomination because to all of that.
By opening the 2021 season as a true ace, Giolito kept up his excellent work as a pitcher. In 31 starts that season, he finished 11-9 with a 3.53 ERA, 201 strikeouts, and a 1.103 WHIP over a then-career-high 178 2/3 innings pitched. Gioltio placed fourth in the AL in WHIP, third in hits per nine innings, and fifth in strikeouts per nine innings, all of which helped him finish 11th in the AL Cy Young voting.
Giolito’s career high was reached in a three-year span during which he recorded a 3.47 ERA, 1.076 WHIP, 11.1 strikeouts, 6.8 hits, and 2.9 walks per nine innings worked. With the exception of walks per nine innings, all those stats would have placed in the top ten in the American League during the previous season. During that three-year timeframe, he also threw 202 innings more than his 162-game average.
However, he’s had a difficult few seasons.
Despite Giolito’s stellar performance from 2019 to 21, the Red Sox are only committing him to a two-year contract worth less than $40 million in total compensation for a reason.
Giolito hasn’t performed well in the previous two years. In 30 starts in 2022, he went 11-9 with a 4.90 ERA and struck out 177 batters. However, during 161 2/3 innings that season, his WHIP (1.435) significantly dropped.
In 2023, things might have gotten worse for Giolito. He played for three teams throughout the year, having been traded by the White Sox to the Angels before the trade deadline, and then by the Guardians at the end of August, when Los Angeles was trying to avoid paying the luxury tax. Between the three organizations, he started 33 games and finished 8–15 with a 4.88 ERA, 1.313 WHIP, and a league-high 41 home runs given up. He was so terrible that season that he became the first pitcher to allow eight or more runs in a game with three separate teams in the same year, a feat not seen since 1899.
Now, there might have been some events in 2023 that led you to believe Giolito’s previous season was merely an anomaly. His first half of the season, which included 19 starts and 112 1/3 innings pitched, was more in line with his three-year peak than with his 2022 campaign. He went 6-5 with a 3.45 ERA, 117 strikeouts, and a 1.140 WHIP.
When Giolito and his spouse filed for divorce in July, during the All-Star break, his season took a dramatic turn. After the break, he struggled in his first start and saw his numbers worsen between his moves to the Angels and Guardians. During his 12 starts with both clubs, he went 2-9 with a 6.96 ERA and gave up more than half of his season total of 21 home runs.
Even so, Giolito proved to be one of baseball’s more resilient pitchers at the end of the season. He ranked 11th in the American League after pitching a career-high 184 1/3 innings. In addition, he recorded 204 strikeouts during the season, which helped him rank fifth in the American League with 9.960 strikeouts per nine innings pitched. Among qualified pitchers in all three categories the previous season, he would have led the Red Sox.
Three pitches make up the majority of his repertory.
Giolito’s pitching style over the past three seasons has mostly consisted of fastballs, changeups, and sliders. He does throw a curveball from time to time, but only 49 times in the previous season, and in three of the previous four seasons, he has utilized it in less than three percent of his pitches.
Although Giolito has never had a very quick fastball, throughout his three-year prime, it was incredibly successful. His fastball reached 94 mph in those three seasons, and he struck out 224 batters with it between 2019 and 21. In two of those three seasons, opponents’ batting average against his fastball was only.203.
Nonetheless, there is conjecture that Giolito’s setbacks throughout the previous two seasons may have resulted from MLB’s crackdown on pitchers using sticky substances in May 2021. Compared to his three-year peak, the spin rate of his fastball has decreased by more than 150 RPM throughout the past two seasons. According to Statcast, his fastball velocity has decreased over the past two years, averaging 92.6 mph in 2022 and 93.1 mph in 2023. With a.283 batting average against Giolio’s fastball in 2022 and a.262 batting average against it last season, opposing hitters have likewise had more success against the pitch.
Several of his family members work in show business now or in the past.
Giolito is a native of Santa Monica, California, thus his family is undoubtedly used to life in Hollywood.
At least three of Giolito’s family members have been or are performers. Among them, his grandfather Warren Frost stands out the most because he was born in Newburyport. The most iconic parts of Frost’s career came considerably later in life, when he starred in all 30 episodes of the original “Twin Peaks,” co-created by Giolito’s uncle, Mark Frost, as Dr. Will Hayward. Frost was George Costanza’s fiancée Susan’s father on “Seinfeld,” a prominent role he had later in the 1990s.
In the 1980s, Lindsay Frost, the mother of Giolito, starred in the soap opera “As the World Turns” on a regular basis. Along with her roles in “Lost,” “CSI,” and “Boston Legal,” she also had appearances in a few episodes of “Fraiser.” Casey, Giolito’s brother, is an actor as well.
Not only did Mark Frost write “Twin Peaks,” but he also contributed to the creation of “Hill Street Blues” and penned novels about the 1913 U.S. Open at Brookline Country Club (“The Greatest Game Ever Played”) and the 1975 World Series Game 6 (“Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series”).
On his father’s side of the family, Giolito’s grandpa, Silvio, was a two-time Olympian in fencing, and his father, Rick, has produced computer games.