White Sox offered Lucas Giolito four-year, $50M extension prior to 2021 season

The White Sox were known to be discussing a contract extension with Lucas Giolito last spring, and The Athletic’s James Fegan shares some details about the talks between the two sides.  The Sox offered Giolito a four-year, $50M deal covering the 2021-24 seasons (Giolito’s three remaining arbitration-eligible years and his first free agent year), and there was also a club option for the 2025 campaign.

As Fegan put it, the “offer was declined without a counter made by Giolito’s camp, as it was not viewed as being suitable enough to drive further discussion.”  As a result, Giolito earned $4.14M in 2021, as per the arbitration-avoiding deal he made with the Sox before extension talks began in earnest.  His salary for 2022 has yet to be determined, as the two sides now appear to be heading for an arbitration hearing after failing to reach an agreement before Tuesday’s filing deadline.

Giolito is looking for a $7.5M salary and the White Sox countered with a $7.3M figure.  Of the 31 players who didn’t agree to contracts prior to Tuesday’s deadline, Giolito’s case represents the smallest financial gap between player and team.  Furthermore, Giolito told The Chicago Sun-Times’ Daryl Van Schouwen and other reporters that negotiations got as close as a $50K difference.

“For it to come down to a 50K difference prior to the filing, it’s like, ’Come on.’  It’s an upsetting part of the process.  It’s why a lot of us don’t enjoy the business side of the process,” Giolito said.

Between the lack of progress in last year’s extension talks or this year’s arbitration talks, it remains to be seen whether or not these disputes could impact Giolito’s future in Chicago.  GM Rick Hahn told Van Schouwen and other reporters that the arbitration impasse was “a function of the arbitration process” and “not a reflection of anything to do with [Giolito].”  As for the right-hander himself, Giolito noted “Like I’ve always said about extensions, I absolutely love this team.  The more I play the more I understand my value as a player.  And I just want fair.  It’s always fair for me, that’s where I’m at.”

Going back to the 2021 extension talks, it is clear that Giolito and his representatives didn’t think the four-year/$50M offer fit their version of “fair,” considering that Giolito was coming off his second season of front-of-the-rotation performance.  While the shortened 2020 campaign limited Giolito to 72 1/3 innings, he posted a 3.48 ERA and a 33.7% strikeout rate that ranked among the league’s best.

Back in March 2020, MLBTR’s Jeff Todd speculated that a Giolito extension could be worth around $45M.  With another good performance in the books that season and Giolito getting a year closer to free agency, clearly a $5M bump from Todd’s projection wasn’t enough to get Giolito’s attention.  While Chicago’s $50M offer did top the amount of guaranteed money the Phillies gave Aaron Nola (another quality pitcher who had between three and four years of service time), Fegan writes that the Nola extension was “widely assessed as a team-friendly deal,” and also that Nola had recently had an injury scare in the form of a forearm strain.

Giolito, meanwhile, has no such injury issues, apart from a few brief IL stints due to muscle strains.  And, with Giolito again pitching well in 2021, the CAA Sports client is surely looking for an even bigger payday in any multi-year extension.  For teams like the White Sox who take a “file and trial” stance when it comes to negotiating one-year arbitration deals, more talks continue when it comes to discussing longer-term extensions, so it isn’t out of the question that the two sides can revisit the subject before things actually reach a hearing.