Red Sox pitcher clinches notable contractual milestone

The righty’s first few starts were a little rocky. Giolito pitched to a 4.85 ERA across five appearances in May. He has performed well since then. Giolito has not allowed more than 3.41 earned runs per nine innings in any of the past four months. He carries a 2.86 ERA while averaging almost six innings per start in 18 appearances since the beginning of June. That doesn’t include Wednesday night’s start, in which walks and a handful of inherited runners coming across the board left him with four earned runs through 4 2/3 innings.

All told, Giolito took a 3.30 ERA into Wednesday’s appearance. His 20% strikeout rate and 10% swinging-strike mark are both a little below average. Giolito isn’t missing bats at the plus rates that he did during his early run with the White Sox, but he’s throwing strikes and working relatively deep into games. He has picked up 14 quality starts while tamping down on the home run issues that plagued him late in his time with Chicago (and during his brief stops with the Angels and Guardians in 2023).

Giolito is going into his age-31 season. He’s coming off a platform year that is arguably better than the one Luis Severino turned in for the Mets a year ago. Severino landed three years and $67M with an opt-out after the second season. One could write that off as an anomaly by an A’s team that wanted to avoid a revenue-sharing grievance and needed to overpay in the midst of a relocation. Even so, Giolito’s numbers stack up to those of Eduardo Rodriguez (four years, $80M at age 31) and Michael Wacha (three years, $51M at age 33) in their respective walk years.

Lucas Giolito's contract prospects

Time will tell what kind of deal the market will bear for Giolito. His camp will probably take aim at four years. Even if that doesn’t materialize because of concerns about the dip in strikeouts or the home run issues he batted in previous seasons, he’ll easily beat the $17.5M net call he faces in declining his end of the mutual option. That’s close to what rebound candidates like Walker Buehler, Alex Cobb and late-career Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander received last winter.

Boston can and almost certainly will tag Giolito with a qualifying offer, which would be in the $22M range. In the likely event that Giolito declines, that’d entitle them to draft compensation. RosterResource estimates the Red Sox are narrowly above the $241M luxury-tax threshold. Assuming that’s the case, they’d receive a pick after the fourth round in 2026 if Giolito declines the QO and signs with another team.