White Sox starting pitcher has another impressive performance as he picks up his fifth consecutive win. His dominance has been a breath of fresh air.
This isn’t the same Lucas Giolito that White Sox fans saw last season. No, Giolito is a changed man and that’s great for the success of this current rebuild. On Tuesday night, Giolito had yet another impressive and long outing for his team.
Giolito pitched eight innings and recorded a season-high 10 strikeouts against the Kansas City Royals. This helped the White Sox to a 4-3 win and doubleheader sweep of the Royals on Tuesday night. For Giolito, his recent dominance for the Sox has been nothing short of great.
We all know that Giolito was the worst starting pitching in MLB last season. It wasn’t even close. Giolito struggled throughout his first full major league season as a starting pitcher. It appeared that he would at best be the Sox third starting pitcher in the rotation this season.
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However, Giolito has taken over this season as the ace of the White Sox pitching staff. With his win on Tuesday, Giolito improved his record to 7-1 and lowered his ERA to 2.85. He only allowed three earned runs against the Royals and that came in the first inning courtesy of a three-run home run from Alex Gordon.
In Giolito’s last outing before Tuesday, he pitched a complete game shutout on the road against the Houston Astros. Giolito has been the best starting pitcher on the Sox for a while now and will possibly continue to be throughout the rest of this year. This is the Giolito the Sox front office thought they were trading for after the 2016 season.
Thankfully, Giolito is starting to finally realize his potential. We all saw glimpses of his ace potential during his seven-start stint at the end of the 2017 season. Despite a lackluster 2018 campaign, we’re all seeing that ace potential play out before our eyes this year. Nothing could be better for Giolito right now than to have a much better 2019 than 2018 for the 24-year-old pitcher.
Although the Sox starting rotation depth is still thin, Giolito provides hope for the future. If he can continue to dominate in his starts, there’s no doubt that he can become an All-Star this season. Who would have expected Giolito to be the ace of the Sox pitching staff coming out of Spring Training? Not many people but it wouldn’t be surprising if Giolito himself had the expectation of being a top pitcher this season.