Lucas Giolito redefined himself in May

Back in early 2017, when Lucas Giolito was questioning everything he was doing while trying to rebuild his mechanics in Triple-A, I mentally assigned a Gavin Floyd comp to him, and more than out of the convenience. Besides being an enigmatic, uneven pitcher in a White Sox uniform, they shared a whole host of traits:

• Right-handed
• Large
• First-round picks out of high school
• Well-regarded fastball-curve combination
• Hit a wall with original team
• Mechanical work to be done
• Doubts about confidence

That comp bummed some readers and listeners out because Floyd wasn’t a fan favorite for reasons I never quite grasped. He had a nice five-year run, averaging a 4.12 ERA (108 ERA+) and 190 innings a season over that time. He also signed the team-friendly extension John Danks didn’t, which became team-friendlier when he suffered arm injuries at the end of his South Side career and the Sox could just walk away from it. My guess is that Floyd had enough innings and nights where he looked untouchable to make his rough ones harder to justify. Perfect is the enemy of good, and all that.

There were some differences between Giolito and Floyd at their worst — Giolito’s chief problem was strikes, while Floyd’s was homers — but the comp had enough going for it to reassure me, especially when Giolito posted a 6.13 ERA and exchanged his curve for a newly minted slider as his primary breaking pitch, which is another thing they had in common. That shared track then took a turn for the rewarding this year when Giolito boasted a 3.55 ERA through his first seven starts.

But Giolito has thrown three starts since then, and they’ve all been great. He went the abbreviated distance in a rain-shortened win over the Blue Jays, the full distance in a four-hit shutout of the Astros, then overcame a first-inning stumble to strike out 10 Royals over eight innings in what is now his fifth straight win.

That Tuesday start put a bow on a May that’s been unbelievably good. If I want to use every part of the buffalo on this Floyd comp, it ranks right up there with Floyd’s best:

That middle one is the next stop on Giolito’s quest, because it could look even better if I shuffled the endpoints by a start. The Rangers knocked out Floyd in the third inning on June 2 that year to raise his ERA to 6.64. Two weeks into August, he’d lowered it to 3.49. Over 12 starts from early June through early August, Floyd posted a 1.19 ERA while averaging seven innings a night.

But depending on how you view the strikeout column, Floyd and Giolito may no longer be comparable. Perhaps Floyd could’ve struck out 10 over nine in this era, but he wasn’t a huge K-rate guy even at his best, which is why his best came was so hard to capture on anything resembling a consistent basis.

Giolito is racking up strikeouts even when he’s not giving himself that many batters to do it. After posting a 16 percent K-rate last year, it’s now over 29 percent. Floyd basically spent his entire White Sox career at 19-20 percent.

It’s easy to see where Giolito’s strikeouts are coming from. His average fastball has gained nearly two ticks, and combined with his big frame and improved command, it’s hard for hitters to meet it when he’s working up in the zone. That makes his changeup more effective, and there have been some games where he hasn’t needed to use anything else. He’s pretty much ditched his curveball, but Whit Merrifield’s postgame comment suggests the reputation still precedes it:

The increased tempo he found with James McCann while racing in the rainout is also a bonus, although I find that to be a self-fulfilling prophecy (Mark Buehrle aside, nobody ever compliments a pitcher’s pace when he’s contending with baserunners). Even if you don’t give that much emphasis, Giolito already has multiple posts on which to hang his improvement.

If Giolito can summon an encore in June, he’ll have done it against a tougher slate of opponents. He’ll face some combination of the Indians, Nationals, Royals, Yankees, Cubs, Rangers, Red Sox and Twins, most of whom have tougher offenses than the ones he’s faced over the first two months. His four-hitter against Houston looms so large in this discussion. That start was his only opportunity to validate his improvement against an above-average opponent the entire month, and he aced it.

Basically, if you told me before the season Giolito was going to take advantage of a favorable schedule to post a sub-2.00 ERA in May, I’d expect it to feel exceptionally fragile. It doesn’t. And while he spent last year torturing analysts who dared to pin hopes on upswings, we’re watching a dramatically different pitcher this time around, both visually and analytically. The longer this guy hangs around, the more we’ll have to search for a comp everybody can be excited about.

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