White Sox: Lucas Giolito’s final start went incredibly well

The Chicago White Sox are almost done with this dreadful 2022 season. They are not going to the playoffs for the first time since 2019 but they are still trying to finish strong. One of the biggest reasons for them not going anywhere this year is underperforming players.

A player that is at the top of that list is Lucas Giolito. He will tell you flat out that he wasn’t good enough this season. He must be better if he is going to maintain a spot in this rotation for the long haul. After wanting a lucrative contract in the offseason, he picked a terrible time to have a bad year.

However, Giolito has been much better over his last handful of starts. That is encouraging because making successful adjustments to the way that you pitch is incredibly hard mid-season. However, going into the offseason strong can really help him.

Giolito got his final start of the season on Tuesday night as he took on the Minnesota Twins. It was a great performance by Giolito to end the season. He ended up going seven innings where have up two runs on two hits and two walks. He had four strikeouts on the night.

Lucas Giolito had a very nice start to end the 2022 season for the White Sox.

This win improved Giolito’s record to 11-9. That is not a great record but he was a winning pitcher in 2022 which is odd considering it was a down year. A guy like Johnny Cueto was a losing pitcher but he was magnificent this season. There are a lot of things that go into that.

Giolito’s ERA is also down to 4.90. It was an ERA that found itself over five for most of the season because he was so bad so finding a way to get it under five and keep it below that number is really nice for him.

With a lot to work on going into the offseason, this string finish is great for him. It was a Minnesota Twins lineup that has some elite hitters in it that he dominated. He should be happy with it.

Lucas certainly won’t be the Opening Day starter in 2023 but the team probably shouldn’t give up on him. He finished in the top 11 of the Cy Young Award voting in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Only the best of the best appear on the ballot at all. Hopefully, they don’t give up on him.

The last thing that the team wants is for him to go somewhere else and pitch the way that we know he can in another uniform. We can only hope that the way that he finished this year helps everyone involved make good choices.