The Boston Red Sox have been playing underwhelming baseball as of late, dropping to 27-29 on the season and 5-5 in their last 10 games after their third consecutive loss against the Milwaukee Brewers on Memorial Day.
Now 7.5 games back of the first-place Yankees in the AL East, the team suffered some more bad news over the weekend, as Alex Bregman suffered a quad injury in Friday's game against the Orioles. With Bregman placed on the 10-day injured list, the team made a corresponding move to call up one of their "Big Three" prospects in Marcelo Mayer.
As the Red Sox attempt to stay afloat without one of their best hitters as the month of May wraps up, they will need their pitching staff to step up, as runs may be at a premium moving forward.
For one Red Sox starting pitcher in particular, the production hasn't matched the price tag since making his regular-season debut with the team on April 30th.
Lucas Giolito's Contract Already Looking Bad for Red Sox
When the team signed Giolito to a fully guaranteed two-year, $38.5 million contract in December of 2023, Red Sox brass were banking on the 30-year-old to resurrect his career after pitching to a sub-4 ERA with the White Sox from 2019-2021.
During that span, Giolito was named an All-Star in 2019, also finishing inside the top-11 in Cy Young voting for three consecutive seasons. His memorable moment came on August 25th, 2020, when Giolito tossed a no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
In 2022, Giolito made 30 starts for the White Sox, finishing the year with an 11-9 record and a 4.90 ERA. This would mark the beginning of his downward trend, as 2023 posed a whole bunch of new challenges.
The 2023 season would see Giolito start the season pitching well for the White Sox, making 21 starts for the team en route to a 3.79 ERA. He would then be traded to the Angels at the trade deadline, where he struggled to a 6.89 ERA in six starts. Upon getting released by the Angels, the Guardians picked him up off waivers just two days after his release.
In an even worse showing in Cleveland, Giolito made 6 starts for the team, going 1-4 with a 7.04 ERA. His last MLB start prior to his injury absence came in October of 2023 for Cleveland, and then the Red Sox took an expensive chance on Giolito during that offseason.
The Giolito that the Red Sox are getting now is looking more like the pitcher he was after his successful three-year stint, from 2022-2023.
After being sidelined for all of 2024 due to elbow surgery, and suffering a hamstring injury in his first Spring Training start as a member of the Red Sox, Giolito made his long-awaited return to the mound on April 30th against the Blue Jays.
One month removed from his first start, the Giolito contract has looked like a disaster for the team. Only Tanner Houck has pitched to a worse ERA (8.04) than Giolito (5.27) among Red Sox starters, a group that has endured its fair share of injuries and inconsistent outings thus far.
It was hard to trust Giolito, who pitched poorly even before the elbow surgery kept him out for more than a year. Now, Red Sox fans may be ready for the Giolito experience to be over just five starts into his tenure with Boston.
He's on the books for $19 million this season, and with 31 hits and 16 earned runs allowed in 27.1 innings of work in 2025, the contract looks to be one of the worst on the Red Sox payroll.
Perhaps one positive to come out of the situation is that Giolito just had his best outing of the season in his latest start on Saturday against the Orioles.
The Burbank, CA native went seven innings, allowing six hits and two walks but no earned runs while striking out six Orioles batters.
The seven innings and 99 pitches thrown were both season-highs for Giolito, and the six strikeouts recorded were the most he's had since his first start this season on April 30th.
Let's hope Giolito can build off this outing and show flashes of the pitcher he was with the White Sox. If he can, the Red Sox would have a valuable end-of-the-rotation arm. If not, the contract will start to look worse and worse as the season goes along.
Giolito's next chance to take the mound will come on Friday against the Braves, a team that has been surging as of late and took two out of three games against the Red Sox in their series from May 16-18 at Fenway Park.