Though He Should Evenaully Be Dominate, We Should Temper Our Current Expectations For Lucas Giolito

Lucas Giolito, the top prospect in all of baseball according to ESPN’s Keith Law, was called up by the Nationals to start tonight’s game. Now, I’ve always been eager to hop on prospect hype trains, I’ve been clamoring for Trea Turner for about a year now, I’ve dreamed about a Bryce Harper and Victor Robles outfield duo since before I started blogging with Barstool, and I wholeheartedly believe that Lucas Giolito will become an ace – just, maybe not yet.

Giolito has mind-numbing stuff and the 6’6 righty has the look of someone who could finish his career with a cabinet of trophies but I don’t now that the 21 year old will dominate the Mets and other MLB teams at this point. Giolito’s curveball is already a better pitch than most MLB starters have and his fastball packs a punch with mid-90s velocity. Giolito’s curveball and two-seam fastball are each still developing but aren’t too shabby either. What I am concerned about, however, is his command.

Giolito, who has spent all of 2016 in AA, has had a couple of issues with the base on balls. He is walking 4.3 batters per 9 innings (about 11% of all batters he faces earn a free bag) and Eastern League batters tend to be more impatient than MLB batters so there should be real concerns about the number of walks that he surrenders (and about whether he will be able to push deep into games). He still maintains a solid 3.17 ERA, which obviously doesn’t include the additional 12 unearned runs the team has surrendered with him on the mound.

I want Giolito to be dominant and I am very confident that eventually, he will be. I just don’t want us to view him as a shutdown starting pitcher now and then be disappointed after a few not-dominant starts. Gio is still a work in progress so lets not get bent out of shape if he has a few rough outings. That being said, if he does come out throwing darts and striking out the side, we should get pretty excited because he is far from a finished product.

PS: Now could not be a more perfect time for Giolito’s first career win. He’s got an opportunity to push the Mets 5 games behind the Nationals for the division lead and further into 3rd place in the division.