2025 In a Discarded-On-The-Dugout-Floor Nutshell
After missing all of 2024 and the start of 2025, Lucas Giolito quietly put up an All-Star worthy season this year, posting the 20th-best ERA+ in baseball. But he probably won’t be back in 2026, and that’s probably just fine.
On June 2, 2025, Lucas Giolito lasted just 1.2 innings against one of the worst teams in baseball, giving up eight hits and seven earned runs at home against the Angels. It had been a rough start to the season up to that point. After a strangely truncated spring training in which the Red Sox slow-walked Giolito’s throwing program despite Giolito publicly dismissing concerns about a minor hamstring strain and insisting he was healthy and ready to pitch, Giolito had given up six or more earned runs in three of his first seven starts. Cooper Criswell got the win in relief against the Angels that day, and it wasn’t an unreasonable question to ask whether he — or one of the other pitching depth pieces — was about to win Giolito’s rotation spot, too.
But, a week later, Giolito pitched six shutout innings against the Rays. And for the rest of the season he was one of the very best pitchers in all of baseball. From June 10 through the end of the regular season, Giolito’s 2.51 ERA was the fifth-best mark in MLB. He threw the 14th-most innings and compiled the 23rd-best fWAR amongst pitchers during that stretch. Without the midsummer’s dream woven by Giolito and Brayan Bello, the Red Sox unequivocally do not make the postseason.
Giolito’s back-of-the-baseball-card success masked an issue that he struggled with all season, including during his excellent June-September stretch: his lack of control. His 3.64 BB/9 was the sixth-worst mark in all of baseball amongst qualified pitchers during that stretch. (Free Agency Warning: Dylan Cease posted the single worst walk rate.) He walked six batters in one early August start against the Padres, and would issue another five free passes in two more starts before season’s end. And given that missing bats was a struggle for him all season (he finished in just the 28th percentile in whiff rate) Giolito’s second-half starts would have made Phillipe Petite proud.
But Giolito’s worst start was the one he didn’t make in Yankee Stadium in October, as Giolito finished the season on the IL with what would turn out to be a minor elbow issue. A man who came to the Red Sox with a reputation as a rubber-armed innings eater once again proved that you simply cannot count on any pitchers in the year 2025.
These days, an eight-inning outing is basically the equivalent of a complete game a generation ago (hell, you can you argue that it’s seven innings). Giolito made it through eight innings twice in 2025. This August outing against the Orioles also came with 8 strikeouts.
This is it for Giolito’s time in Boston, right?
Lucas Giolito made it pretty clear that he loved playing in Boston and would be thrilled to come back:
“I made it clear to everybody. I would love to come back here and continue to play for the Red Sox. It’s the most fun I have ever had having a season with a team in the big leagues. I felt like the way it ended left such a bad taste in my mouth, and the rest of the team, particularly me not being able to pitch in that playoff series. It really sucked. I was like I really hope I can come back, and it goes better for us next time.”
But the Red Sox, in deciding not to extend Giolito a qualifying offer last week, made it pretty clear that they’re just not into him. So if Craig Breslow has no interest in Giolito at one-year and $22 million, it’s hard for me to see any way he returns next year, barring a total collapse of his market.
This is not the Savant page of someone you would expect to have a strong season in 2026:
So in light of that, I am not going to be the least bit worried about Lucas Giolito not being on the Red Sox roster next season. The underlying numbers do not point to him being a good pitcher.
But it’s the… ah, overlying numbers that count in baseball. And so, when thinking about roster construction, we have to concede that, no matter what the numbers under the hood said, Giolito was a viable number two starter in 2025 in terms of results. So Craig Breslow needs to not only add top-of-the-rotation quality behind Garrett Crochet for 2026, he has to replace the top-of-the-rotation results that Giolito gave the Sox last year.
Is there an arm already in the system that can do that? If not, the offseason shopping is that much harder.
