The Chicago White Sox needs to be very careful with Lucas Giolito going forward.
Before we get going here, let’s make one thing very clear. Lucas Giolito was brutal in 2022. He is one of the team’s biggest reasons for having a bad season. If he was the Giolito that we’ve seen from 2019-2021, they might be much closer to being a playoff team.
Now that it’s out of the way, we can move on. He was an elite pitcher during those aforementioned 2019 – 2021 seasons. He was a top-11 finisher for the Cy Young Award in each of those three seasons and deserves a lot of praise for that. However, that doesn’t give him a pass for 2022 either.
Baseball is a very “what have you done for me lately?” type of sport. Lately, Giolito has been awful. With that in mind, the White Sox need to keep his previous potential in mind when dealing with him during the offseason. They should absolutely not overreact and trade him.
His value isn’t that high right now and there is no chance that they would get a good return for him. Then he’d go to another team and dominate again and make the White Sox look foolish. That would be a major mistake.
The 2022 season has been hard for pretty much everyone. They need to make changes but they need to avoid overreacting with some of the players. Hopefully, the right choices are made to help the 2023 squad excel.