The White Sox avoided a dangerous game with Lucas Giolito

The Chicago White Sox has one of the best pitching staffs in the Major Leagues. It’s made up of such talented players as Lance Lynn, Dylan Cease, and Lucas Giolito. The White Sox needs to have all hands on deck in the pitching department in order to have success.

However, management has played a dangerous game with Giolito and his contract. If you haven’t been keeping track of what has been going on with Giolito and the White Sox, the team (which has a history of being a little too tight with their purse strings) decided to be frugal with their star pitcher in contract negotiations.

Giolito put in a salary request at $7.45 million while the White Sox countered with an offer of $7.4 million. At that point, the two sides were $50,000 apart in their negotiations.

You would have thought that Chicago would have bitten the bullet and given Giolito what he was asking for but that’s not the case. Then, the two sides got to $200,000 apart with Giolito asking for $7.5 million while Chicago is only willing to offer $7.3 million.

Another interesting fact about this is that the White Sox did offer Giolito a longer-term deal last spring for an estimated $50 million dollars for four years. Obviously, that offer was not accepted.

The Chicago White Sox and Lucas Giolito reached a one-year agreement on Friday.

But luckily for both sides, arbitration has been avoided and the White Sox has signed Giolito to a one-year deal worth $7.45 million. More details about the agreement will be announced in the coming days.

Even though an agreement has been reached, the White Sox may not know this but they have painted themselves into a corner by not taking it easy with Giolito and giving him what he wanted.

First of all, the inability to overcome a difference of $50,000 shows just how cheap the White Sox really are. This is not only going to affect Giolito’s s future with the Sox but others that want to ask for extensions or are interested in coming to the Sox as a free agent.

Giolito is set to become a free agent at the end of the 2023 season meaning the Sox stand the chance of losing him to another team. It’s possible that, with the knowledge he has about the way the Sox operate, he may not be interested in returning to the team thanks to their less than stellar negotiating tactics.

The White Sox really needs to keep Giolito in the lineup. He’s one of the best pitchers on the staff and Chicago doesn’t want to have to spend time rebuilding the pitching rotation when they already have an ace on hand. It’s much easier to stick with what you know works than to have to start over again.

This little game that the White Sox played with Giolito is going to come back to bite them. They must make amends with him and get him signed to a long-term deal that is amicable for both sides but not too cheap as to send Giolito packing.

Let’s hope that Giolito and the White Sox are able to work out a long-term deal between the two of them before they lose him to free agency. We should also hope that the bad blood that the White Sox generated with this little scheme isn’t enough to send Giolito heading out of Chicago and to another Major League team.