Lucas Giolito completed four innings against the Athletics tonight. That pushes him beyond 140 frames on the season, clinching a contractual milestone that’ll have an impact on the upcoming free agent class. Giolito has hit the vesting threshold needed to convert the Red Sox’s $14MM club option into a $19MM mutual option. That means he’ll be able to opt out in favor of a $1.5MM buyout and return to the open market in search of a multi-year deal.
Giolito is sure to go that route unless he suffers a major injury within the next few weeks. The 31-year-old righty is amidst his best season since he received down-ballot Cy Young votes each year between 2019-21. He has rebounded nicely from the elbow surgery that robbed him of his first year in Boston. Giolito returned this season on a $19MM player option. A Spring Training hamstring strain forced him to wait a few weeks to make his team debut, but he has been one of Boston’s most reliable starters behind Garrett Crochet over the past few months.
The righty’s first few starts were a little rocky. Giolito pitched to a 4.85 ERA across five appearances in May. He has performed well since then. Giolito has not allowed more than 3.41 earned runs per nine innings in any of the past four months. He carries a 2.86 ERA while averaging almost six innings per start in 18 appearances since the beginning of June. That doesn’t include tonight’s start, in which walks and a handful of inherited runners coming across the board left him with four earned runs through 4 2/3 innings.
All told, Giolito took a 3.30 ERA into today’s appearance. His 20% strikeout rate and 10% swinging strike mark are both a little below average. Giolito isn’t missing bats at the plus rates that he did during his early run with the White Sox, but he’s throwing strikes and working relatively deep into games. He has picked up 14 quality starts while tamping down on the home run issues that plagued him late in his time with Chicago (and during his brief stops with the Angels and Guardians in 2023).
Giolito is going into his age-31 season. He’s coming off a platform year that is arguably better than the one Luis Severino turned in for the Mets a year ago. Severino landed three years and $67MM with an opt-out after the second season. One could write that off as an anomaly by an A’s team that wanted to avoid a revenue sharing grievance and needed to overpay in the midst of a relocation. Even so, Giolito’s numbers stack up to those of Eduardo Rodriguez (four years, $80MM at age 31) and Michael Wacha (three years, $51MM at age 33) in their respective walk years.
Time will tell what kind of deal the market will bear for Giolito. His camp will probably take aim at four years. Even if that doesn’t materialize because of concerns about the dip in strikeouts or the home run issues he batted in previous seasons, he’ll easily beat the $17.5MM net call he faces in declining his end of the mutual option. That’s close to what rebound candidates like Walker Buehler, Alex Cobb and late-career Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander received last winter.
Boston can and almost certainly will tag Giolito with a qualifying offer, which would be in the $22MM range. In the likely event that Giolito declines, that’d entitle them to draft compensation. RosterResource estimates the Red Sox are narrowly above the $241MM luxury tax threshold. Assuming that’s the case, they’d receive a pick after the fourth round in 2026 if Giolito declines the QO and signs with another team.
Image courtesy of James A. Pittman, Imagn Images.
Can’t wait to watch him pitch somewhere else next year – after tonight’s dud I’ll pack his bags and drive him to the airport myself!
lol. Red Sox fans love to run players and personnel outa town
Name one fan base thats used to winning that doesn’t when thier team loses alot
Lol. Okay, guess we’ll just build him a statue for no-showing a game we needed to win against an inferior opponent to keep our odds of making the playoffs from dwindling even further than they have over the last 2 weeks. You happy now?
Giolito is 10-4 this season. You wouldn’t have any playoff odds to speak of without him.
He’s been pitching very well for months, and the Red Sox wouldn’t even have a shot at the playoffs without him.
He can’t pitch great every game ya big enormous baby.
Ghost…Its his job ..hes got ONE job!…to get outs while not giving up runs and he gets paid millions of dollars to do it. So yes him doing a “good” job is the least we can expect..every time out especially when he only works like once a week…I assume you have a job and work 5 days a week..if you looked like you half assed it once a week do you think you’d still have your job?
Exactly! I wouldn’t get to keep my job if I only showed up and met expectations 80% of the time. But boo hoo for the guy who gets paid millions to throw a ball having people expect the same out of him.
You really think that Giolito thought, “hey, what if I just half assed it tonight”? Some of you are ridiculous.
No, of course not. That would be stupid. No one can or should go into a game thinking “I’m going to suck tonight”. Difference is the really special ones go in thinking “they’re getting everything I effing have tonight” instead of just hoping for the best and looking like a deer in the headlights if it turns out they don’t have it.
It is not Giolito’s fault that he’s just a guy. That’s fine. Teams need their JAGs. But I’m not interested in paying him like he’s more than that, which he surely is about to be. Especially if he is going to save his worst outings for nights we desperately need a win. Thank you for your service but we have other guys who can fill a JAG role for JAG money.
Well some of us want see them keep playing baseball into October and are sick of these September slides. If he can’t show up in a game we’ve gotta have against the A’s I don’t really give a damn what he’s done up to this point.
If we wouldn’t have had this version of Gio this year, there’s no way that we stick in the conversation for the playoffs . That being said, I would rather him get paid somewhere else. There’s still too much uncertainty on a one year outlier after TJ and an injury plagued season for me to want to commit Severino money plus. Appreciate him, and hope he gets paid
Saint – It entirely depends on how much it would take to extend him. He’s had a fine season after shaking off the rust in May.
The bigger question, where’s all the Breggy Beer Man suckups who wanted to give him a blank check after just a few good weeks to start the season?
I really don’t get how ignorant some people can be here. A few good weeks and they want to hand out a massive contract, Boras wishes those fans ran the team.
Same thing with Rafaela, people proclaiming him to be the next Mookie after just a few good weeks. Get a grip, people.
And of course the only players who have had big games tonight are Duran, Yoshida and Story …. three guys who a portion of the “fan base” wanted gone long ago. So comical …..
well the thing with Gio is that it’s safe to assume the deal it’ll take to keep him around will be more than he’s worth.
Of course this is also true of Bregman, except unlike with the rotation there are not any other obvious alternative options for high level play at the hot corner beyond moving Mayer there or re-signing Bregman.
There are plenty of other ways they could go for starting pitching. Plus we saw how slow Bregman’s market moved last winter – if we are going to place bets today on who is more likely to sign for less than they’re probably expecting to get this winter I think we’d all agree Bregman’s a better bet than Giolito.
I think the Sox can afford one modest overpay between these two guys, and I’d choose Bregman.
Dirty – His worth is dictated by the market. If he finishes the season with an ERA under 3.50 then he should get #2 or #3 money, remember he had a really good track record before the injury began impacting him in 2022.
With that said, I don’t think the Sox would be too bad off with a combination of Houck/Crawford/Fitts/Dobbins/Early/Tolle/Sandoval covering the #3-#5 in the rotation. I’ll let you decide if you want to add Harrison to that list ;O)
There’s other hitter options out there besides Breggy. I don’t mind overpays but not on contracts of more than 4 years. They could go big with Tucker or smaller with Suarez, among other options. Story’s flexibility allows for the Sox to acquire a 2B, SS or 3B.
That’s hindsight fever. Can’t build your reputation on hindsight. You’ll be right every time that’s for sure.
You’re calling us out on Bregman and separating the fact you weren’t on board?
I think 90% of the fan base was excited about Alex the first couple of months. The man was a stud.
To come here now and want to push him out the door for poor performance is an interesting opinion.
And then to bash us who were excited and use a term like “suck ups?” I take exception my friend.
You get a little loose with the lip sometimes and I think it’s uncalled for.
It’s really nice that he came back at the perfect time to make the deal look not so bad for the Red Sox
However, his free agency screams dodgers since John Henry would rather invest in his soccer team and test Kyle Harrison out or give Jordan hicks another go around
The Red Sox are paying luxury tax this year. Spending $300M doesn’t guarantee anything.
Giolito is probably going to chase that free agency money, and he’s probably going to get it, but probably not from the Red Sox I think.
Acoss – Hard to say, but the Sox certainly do already have 7-8 guys that could replace Gio.
He needs to go back to wherever Reynaldo Lopez is!