Lucas Giolito’s decline is very concerning for the White Sox

Chicago White Sox fans were surely horrified to witness the Sox’s final game of this week’s series versus the Houston Astros. The Astros were able to score at will against any pitcher that the Sox threw at them.

In particular, starting pitcher Lucas Giolito was rocked by the Astros in limited action. His performance was a microcosm of the kind of season he has been having. Giolito has been struggling and it’s been evident in almost every game he has played this year.

He was once a top pitcher in the American League and his decline is noticeable. He was once someone that had been in the Cy Young conversation. In 2019, Giolito was sixth in Cy Young voting. In 2020, he was 7th, and in 2021, he was 11th.

But this year he will not even be mentioned in the same breath as the words Cy Young. He has fallen hard this year.

Something has Giolito down and it’s hard to be sure what’s going on. Is it his mechanics? Have hitters figured him out? It’s easy to see he’s been on a decline but he has taken a proverbial jump off the cliff this year.

And it doesn’t look like he’s going to be able to catch a branch on the way down. It seems as if he’s going to fall all the way down to the bottom.

The Chicago White Sox needs to get Lucas Giolito back to his old ways soon.

Have the best years of Giolito’s baseball life passed him by? If this season is any indication, the answer to that is yes. In the 22 games that he has he has played in, he has won nine and lost seven.

His ERA is a very uncomfortable 5.34 in the 116.1 innings he has pitched. His WHIP currently stands at 1.24 and he has allowed 134 hits, 73 runs, and 69 earned runs. These are not stellar stats for a starting pitcher.

As he continues to have tough games like he did against the Astros and there doesn’t appear to be any solutions for his difficulties, he becomes more of a liability than an asset to the team.

Fans are already calling for him to go the way that Dallas Keuchel went and be designated for assignment but that is just not going to happen. The White Sox will do that so close to the end of the season but this just shows the growing frustration that the fan base is having with the former beloved starting pitcher.

Barring any sort of miracle, it appears as if Giolito is going to wind up in the doldrums of baseball and have a pretty bad season. The White Sox wouldn’t be able to rely upon him for critical starts in the playoffs should they even manage to make it to the playoffs. This is how far he has fallen. He has become inconsistent and unreliable.

While we don’t know why Giolito has become this way, we do know that the White Sox cannot have this liability. Something must be done but it won’t be done until the offseason.