Red Sox righty Lucas Giolito will begin the 2025 season on the 15-day injured list, manager Alex Cora announced this morning (link via Julian McWilliams of the Boston Globe). Giolito exited his Grapefruit League debut earlier this week after one inning due to tightness in his hamstring. A subsequent MRI revealed a low-grade strain, the right-hander himself revealed to the team’s beat this morning (link via MassLive’s Sean McAdam). While Giolito isn’t being shut down from throwing entirely, it seems they’ll back off enough that Opening Day won’t be realistic.
Giolito, 30, signed a two-year, $38.5MM contract with the Sox in the 2023-24 offseason but has yet to throw a regular season pitch for them. A partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow last spring led to an internal brace procedure that wiped out his entire 2024 campaign. His elbow was healthy enough to get back on the mound this week and put him in position to break camp in the rotation, but the hamstring issue will prevent that from happening. The team hasn’t put forth a specific timetable for his return, though it’s relatively encouraging that it’s being termed “low-grade” and that Giolito is still throwing.
The Red Sox will now open the season with three starting pitchers on the injured list. Giolito joins Brayan Bello (shoulder) and Kutter Crawford (knee) in that regard. That leaves the Red Sox with a group including Garrett Crochet, Tanner Houck, Walker Buehler and two of Quinn Priester, Richard Fitts, Cooper Criswell and Josh Winckowski in the rotation.
Giolito tells Rob Bradford of WEEI that he doesn’t feel the IL stint is necessary but acknowledged that it’s the team’s call. “If I were in charge, I would like to throw a ’pen tomorrow,” says Giolito. “I don’t know they want me to do that.” The right-hander notes that he felt 100% after playing catch this morning and is hoping it’ll be a minimum stay on the injured list.
With two starters already shelved, it seems the Sox will opt for the extra cautious route despite some ostensible protest from Giolito himself. The team can ill afford to see Giolito go down with a more severe strain that’d sideline him for a lengthier period. If he’s out for only a minimal stay, he could be reinstated just 12 days into the 2025 campaign, as Opening Day IL placements can be backdated by the maximum three days.
Giolito is starting to remind me of Jed Lowrie when he signed with the Mets.
More like Jed Clampett but he moved to the Hills of Beverly.
Jed is a name that needs to make a comeback. Like Alice. Or Thor.
Jed Lowrie was injured on the Sox too.
Lowrie – Mets career:
$20 million
At Bats – 7
Hits – 0
Walks – 1
Also reminds me of Stephen Strasburg’s contract with Washington.
Just as the sun rises in the east, and water is wet, Lucas Giolito will find himself on the injured list.
Used to Chris Sale, buddy. Look what happened to him
Lucas is Chris Sale without the scissors
Not sure i understand the reference
These guys…
Doesn’t anyone warm up anymore?!
laughing all the way to the bank!! Great signing Red Sox!!
Giolito is not laughing. He is looking to have a great year that can give him a big contract. Yes, the Sox have gotten nothing out of it and none of the fans were cheering about this signing, but no way you could predict this. No pitcher wants to be a complete bust and fade away with the bloated contract they got for not playing.
I mean, Rendon is not a pitcher, but from what we hear he’s perfectly content to be a complete bust and to fade away with his bloated contract without playing.
But yeah, that’s a unique case. Your point is well taken. Most of these guys want to play, want to compete, and want to succeed. There’s no reason to think Giolito isn’t one of them.
These paper tigers make me laugh. MLB used to have obese pitchers who were drunk as a skunk, they’d pitch 20 CG’s and multiple shoutouts per season. Dock Ellis, on the other hand…
Lucas G(I)o(L)ito
Quickly rising in the ranks as worst contract in Redsox history .
Carl Crawford has entered the chat.
So has Pablo Sandoval.
Dusty Pedey says hi maw, gimme some milk
Rusney Castillo feels slighted.
Dustin signed a team friendly contract at a time when his career had a clear HOF trajectory. He gave us a hometown discount so he could play his entire career for our club. He played hard every inning of every game he was in. When Machado ended his career with a dirty slide it was a tragedy for Boston and for baseball, but no true Sox fan ever regretted giving Pedroia that contract.
May you fall into the Charles every time the Sox lose just for thinking such a thing.
That’s one that while not getting value, he got paid but lost out on a chance to play in the majors when the rules changed and Financially the Sox were better off keeping him in the minors.
@fenwayfrank
And to think that a guy who wanted to be paid $20K by the Red Sox and was quite productive and they wouldn’t pay him and instead traded him to the Yankees.
Garrett Crochet, tick tock tick tock
he wont blow up, if they do not extend him.if they do extend him, he blows up a month later.
Uh… Do remember Carl Crawford?
Not even close to the worst.
If Giolito never throws another pitch in a Sox uniform it still won’t come close to the worst contract in Sox history.
What if he throws lots of pitches and is the worst pitcher in history
It’s only one year.
Not even close to the worst
Good work everyone. Chicken and Beer all around. Put it on Josh’s tab
Another tremendous signing by Breslow and Co. – Good Lord
Pathetic at best.
He had a whole f/n year to stretch things out.
Ate to much turkey during his year long time off
This is getting ridiculous now. The one that really bothers me is Kutter Crawford. The kid hurt his knee last April, pitched through the entire season with a bum knee and they did nothing to address it in the offseason? Odds are that he’ll need knee surgery and will be put on the 60 day IL. I don’t understand how it got to this.
As far as Giolito goes, I’m banking on him never throwing a pitch for Boston. A waste of $38M. Thankfully, they should have the depth to cover his absence, just so long as Wink is not the replacement for him in the rotation. He belongs in Worcester (if not Portland) to start the season.
What’s disturbing is he appears to have gotten enormous while on the mend. Learned a thing or two from Lance Lynn.
You’re right Theo. If you were rehabbing for a full season, wouldn’t you think you’d be in amazing shape come spring training time? Even with your elbow immobilized for the first 8-12 weeks post surgery, the doctors advise you to exercise (stationary bike, waking on a treadmill, etc.)
Then once you are able to move the elbow, you gradually increase your level of exercise as you strengthen your arm. After 6+ months, you can basically go full bore with the exception of heavy weight lifting that involves your repaired elbow. You can run, bike, do yoga, specific circuit training, leg exercises, etc. You’d think a professional athlete would have a full time trainer to kick his butt and get him ready for the season in the best shape of his life. Instead, it looks like he did the Hostess diet…embarrassing.
Winckowski’s WHIP has always been bad. He just was lucky on batted balls in play. He has nothing left and should be the first DFA when the Red Sox need a spot for a NRI to be added to the 40-man and to the 26-man rosters.
Priester and Fitts have both looked pretty good so far, getting them starts in the early going may not be a bad thing
Priester or Fitts will grab a permanent spot, maybe both. I think Giolito knows this and doesn’t want to be the odd man out.
I agree. I’d prefer no injuries, but as long as Gio isn’t out for a long time, giving Fitts and/or Priester some innings could be beneficial.
Great signing.
It may still turn out to be a good signing.
It may, but he’s injured and has not pitched well since 2023. Not a reliable rotation piece.
2023 is not that long ago. He can still have a great 2025 season.
Maybe he should have called someone over when he first felt the issue instead of trying to pitch through it. What a novel concept.
Maybe the Red Sox need an entire new strength and conditioning staff.
A good research article would be a team by team breakdown for how much “dead money” each MLB team incurred in ’24 from IL time (prorated of course and whole salary for those out entire season) and DFAs. Those figures would probably be eye popping on their own and naturally wouldn’t account for extra expenses of what teams pay to acquire replacements outside the organization.
It would speak to how much more teams are paying guys to rehab than perform whether TJS, pricey players that got big guaranteed $ via extension or FA making it easier to miss time than before (Rendon extreme example), etc.
Teams are culpable to whatever degree they could have prevented injury, go along with “load management” or failed to assess players that became goldbricks…..but shows what fans pay not to see that are sunk costs.
Wow, what a great comment troll.
what a great comment troll.
Clay is 100% correct.
Domo Origato Mr Brasieroto….. though sometimes he pitched like it , was never injured making 14.50 a hour pitching for us… Good luck sushi eating friend in your first series coming up( K’s Betts AND Ohtahni) to nail it down for Cubbies…
$37 mil
has yet to throw a single pitch for boston in a major lg game
Reading is FUNdamental.
This incredible piece of investigative journalism states, rather explicitly, mind you, that Giolito has said that he feels well enough to pitch tomorrow, and that the Red Sox, out of an abundance of caution, plans to hold him back.
This very article, with different names inserted in the requisite places, is a template; a veritable Mad Lib of a trillion similar articles that appear here, and on every other “sports journalism” site, throughout the year, and year after year, after year.
“The Delaware Blobfish announced today, that starting infielder/outfielder/starter/reliever/closer/clubhouse attendant Harry Rumpleschnitz has been placed on the DL, due to an inflamed hangnail. Blobfish manager, Crinkle Fruitenbottom, said “Listen, Rumpy could go tomorrow if this was the playoffs, but we want to give him extra time to get right. An inflamed hangnail could become a completely torn hangnail, if we don’t take the time to do this right. It’s a long season, and we get – the fans want to see Har-Har out there, everyday, but we have to look after our players, and think about the long term future, right? The good news is that Rump-alot has already progressed to holding his own XBox controller on the back fields, and there’s no reason to think this is going to be a long-term deal, so, shut him down, ramp him up slowly, under the care of our medical staff, who knows about this hangnail stuff, and we’ll pull back and get a hangnail MRI if this thing is still barking in a few weeks.”
Then, the template commentariat, not to be out done by the insipid predictability of all seventeen gazillion of these articles, will post seemingly AI-written screeds about “candy ass” ballplayers of today, CLEARLY taking advantage of the fans by eating bonbons, thereby proving MY PERSONAL prophetic pronouncement, which I made RIGHT HERE on this site, that the signing was an OVERPAY for an entitled, talentless player who has been injured since before he was born.
Until tomorrow….
@ Kidding Right?
That’s why we need to change the pay structure to you getting paid if you play. Each game you play, you get a days worth of salary. If you don’t play, you don’t get paid. Problem solved…
So a pitcher who has to miss a season and a half due to tommy john surgery shouldn’t get paid for a year and a half? That’s what you’re saying? Jeez I feel bad for the rookie who’s making the bare minimum have to go a year and a half without pay. That wouldn’t ever be allowed, and it shouldn’t. The only thing I think that comes even close to that suggestion is clauses put into contracts, especially very injury prone players, that the money they make pays into part of their rehab and the team isn’t docked for said player’s salary and their rehab, facilities, Doctors. Etc. Basically like a pay cut because you can’t do your job, But not a significant one. Just like if you or I were injured at work at our average joe job we could still be paid but it will be from workman’s comp which will be a small pay cut, but most of the time not enough where it could affect your livelihood. I had a job a few years ago where I made about $1,400 per week but i got injured and was put on workman’s comp which paid me roughly $1,100 per week. So say a player makes 2.5 million dollars, if they had a very significant injury that caused them to miss a significant amount of time, then maybe they should receive only 2 million dollars of their salary while the other 500 thousand dollars went towards rehab and other things needed during their recovery.
My main problem with Analytics has always been the separation into silos of 26 individuals to make a team. Each player is looked at individually, not necessarily as part of a team, or how each will play as part of a organism that has human being working together. The over reliance on finding some “underlying stats” or numbers that justify spending millions of dollars is a tool, but should only be used as such.
Paxton, Hill Hendriks, Giolito were signed based on some analyst with a spreadsheet saying, “his xERA or FIP is really good”, when anyone with two eyes who watches baseball says, “maybe not”. Giolito has already lost “it” in 2023 before he signed with the Sox.But, smartest guys in the room made the decision.
Why am I bringing this up? I’ve read lots of posts here that say (something akin to) Red Sox always blow free agent signings, and I’m sure someone has said that here about Giolito. So, I’ve spent lots of time thinking about that statement.
What I have come up with, in my admittedly tiny brain, is the large and overly relied on Analytics and Baseball Science Offices that John Henry has created.
This is not one POBO or GM making a lot of bad decisions. As a matter of fact, it’s been four different GMs. So are they all bad at free agent signings? No, but the be all and end all of Analytics has been the common factor throughout.
Dave Dombrowski and Theo fought threw it somewhat and relied on a combination of baseball decisions coupled with spreadsheets.
I’m excited for this season, but I’m tired of watching free agents fail here because of Bill James’ disciples.
The End
Go Sox
Paxton, Hill Hendriks, Giolito were signed based on some analyst with a spreadsheet saying, “his xERA or FIP is really good”, when anyone with two eyes
========================
1-They’ve also acquired some guys that did well.
2-Nothing personal, but your eyes, compared to hard stats, are insignificant.
Joe- many many people on here have posted that the Sox make poor free agents signings. I was just positing that maybe it’s an over-over reliance on analytics. Just a thought…
Second, I’m not so brash to mean my eyes, I meant baseball executives, scouts and lifers eyes. Maybe just inarticulately written.
But, I will say that when signing free agents, you get what you pay for….
To lighten up the mood:
nytimes.com/athletic/6199437/2025/03/13/red-sox-st…
That was great. Thanks.
Red Sox prospects vs. Rays prospects tonight at 7 pm Eastern on MLB Network.
Red Sox starting line-up:
CF Anthony
2B Campbell
SS Mayer
RF Garcia (The Password)
3B Romero
1B Jordan
LF Bleis
DH Brannon
C Rosario
P Early
The Red Sox were rated as the #1 farm system in baseball. With three up 100 prospects in the top 12 they overwhelmingly are the best, and the fact that all three are in AAA shows the depth they have in position players this year!
I think it is the number of injuries to pitchers. When you take another starting pitcher out of the opening day rotation it is of concern.