Pros and Cons: Should Mets sign Lucas Giolito?

After losing out on Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Mets appear to be shopping for pitchers only in the free-agent bargain aisle, seemingly determined to avoid long-term deals with anyone at or nearing age 30.

So they’re looking for bounce-back candidates willing to sign short-term contracts as a way of restoring their value after injury or underperformance. That is, someone similar to Luis Severino, whom the Mets signed to a one-year, $13 million deal a few weeks ago.

Lucas Giolito fits that description and the Mets are showing “strong interest” in him, according to a report in the New York Post.

A former All-Star who received AL Cy Young Award votes as recently as 2021, Giolito’s overall performance has slipped significantly the last two seasons, largely because opponents have crushed his once-effective fastball.

However, he’s only 29 and did have a solid first half last season for the Chicago White Sox before pitching horribly the last two months of the season after trades to the Los Angeles Angels and then the Cleveland Guardians.

So, is Giolito worth a gamble? Here are the pros and cons.

CONS

For three straight years, from 2019-21, Giolito was a very good starter for the White Sox but the last two seasons he had ERAs of 4.90 and 4.88 with ERA-plus numbers that were below league average.

What makes any analysis a bit complicated, however, is that for his first 21 starts last season, with the White Sox, Giolito went 6-6 with a 3.79 ERA with fairly strong underlying numbers.

With the Angels and Guardians, however, Giolito posted ERAs of 6.89 and 7.04, respectively, in six starts for each team while giving up a whopping 21 home runs. For the season he allowed 41 home runs, most in the AL.

The primary culprit seems to be Giolito’s four-seam fastball, which averaged 93.3 mph last season, according to Brooks Baseball, a tick down from his 94-plus as recently as 2020. Perhaps more revealing, his spin rates were down as well, meaning he wasn’t getting as much carry on his four-seamer up in the zone.

In fact, both the velocity and spin rate on his fastball dropped below the 40th percentile of major league pitchers, according to MLB Statcast.

“That’s what we mean by late life,” one scout told me. “A high spin rate creates deception and carry and allows a guy without elite velocity to pitch at the top of the zone. For whatever reason, Giolito lost some of that.”

There is speculation that his diminished fastball is related to baseball’s sticky-stuff crackdown in May of 2021, meaning that Giolito may have relied heavily on the use of a sticky substance to generate his high spin rate. On the other hand, the crackdown didn’t seem to have an immediate effect, as he pitched well that season.

“It could just be related to his mechanics, his arm slot, things like that,” said the scout. “He made some dramatic changes with his delivery years ago after struggling early in his career. Maybe he can fix himself again but he better figure something out. The last two months (of 2023) he was a mess. He was leaving everything in the middle of the plate. He’s got a good changeup, but he was hanging a bunch of them and they were getting hit for home runs too. He was just getting hammered.”

PROS

Giolito’s pre-trade numbers with the White Sox last year offer some reason for optimism that he can get back on track. In fact, he seemed headed for a solid season before being traded to the Angels and then the Guardians.

Beyond his very solid 118 ERA-plus number in those 21 starts with Chicago, the pre and post-trade splits on his fastball make for quite a contrast.

Against Giolito’s four-seamer with the White Sox last season, for example, opponents hit .231 and slugged .429, with nine home runs in 121 innings.

When Giolito pitched for the Angels and Guardians, however, opponents hit .338 against his four-seamer with a rather staggering .851 slugging percentage, with 10 home runs in 63 1/3 innings. The fastball was getting hit so hard that he began throwing it less and less -- it accounted for only 36 percent of his pitches those last two months.

“That’s why I think it has to be more than the sticky stuff,” a second scout said. “He was solid before the trades. He’s probably not going to be a front-of-the-rotation guy again but just about anybody would take him as a No. 3 or 4 in their rotation the way he pitched in the first half last year.

“I’d probably take the chance on him but I admit it’s hard to ignore how badly he pitched after being traded. Teams are going to do their own analysis, but no matter what they’ll be taking a leap of faith if they sign him.”

VERDICT

As long as it’s not more than a one-year deal, why not? That is if bargains are indeed all the Mets are now shopping for this winter.

It’s a bit of a mystery as to why Giolito was such a disaster in Anaheim and Cleveland after the trades last season, but his track record offers enough reason to believe he can at least be a solid back-end starter again, with the possibility he’ll be significantly better than that.

The cost just shouldn’t exceed the reduced expectations.