It’s been a long time coming boys and girls.

After many failed years (2.5 to be exact) it seems White Sox starter Lucas Giolito has finally figured out this pitching thing.

Pitching is hard. Especially in slow pitch softball but imagine throwing a baseball over hand about 100 times a game to professional athletes who are grown men and most of them in tip top shape like myself. 6 foot 200 to be exact. Prototype in other words. But seriously, Giolito is balling the hell out right now and does not seem like he is going to slow down anytime soon.

It has been fun to watch especially because during the 2018 season Giolito held an ERA of 6.13 (which had to be the highest ERA among qualified starters) through 32 starts. He threw 173.1 innings gave up a Major League high 118 earned runs and an American League leading 90 walks compared to 125 strikeouts. On the bright side, he did have an ERA+ of 69 (which isn’t good). After that season, after all the years of hype being drafted 16th overall in the 2012 draft, being traded with Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning for Adam Eaton (sketch), it looked like Giolito might not have the promising future everyone predicted. Then the baseball gods came down and touched his right arm in the most elegant, respectful, yet powerful way ever.

Fortunately, humans are given the ability to make changes, learn from mistakes, and then apply what they learned to their given task at hand. Giolito is the example of a human who knew he needed to change something and he applied it perfectly.

So far, through 10 starts, Giolito owns a 7-1 record with an ERA of 2.85, 69 strike outs, 20 walks, and leads the majors with two complete games and is tied with a handful of guys with one shut out this season so far. What really made people start to give Giolito the attention he deserved was his first career shutout against the deadly Astros lineup where he diced them up only allowing four hits, nine strikeouts and only one walk. Another cazy stats that I just learned curtesy of MLB.com, is that shutout also marked the first complete game by a pitcher for the White Sox in 382 games, the last one? Some guy named Chris sale back in 2016. Pretty nice company.

Yesterday, Giolito pitched eight innings, allowed three runs and marked a new career high in strikeouts with 10 against a Royals lineup that the first four hitters made some noise that ended in a three run home run by Alx Gordon. From there on out, Giolito allowed only one hit the rest of the game and let his offense and closer Alex Colome, former Ray great, do the rest of the work.

Giolito seems to be coming into his own and is making some noise after some hard work, a weird look in the mirror, and some love from the baseball gods. Giolito deserves some recognition and hopefully he is here to stay for a while. Plus some idiot in my fantasy baseball league that everyone cares about dropped him and ya boy added him. The White Sox may not be a great baseball team at the moment, but they do have a bright spot in Giolito and hopefully can build around him for years to come. Thank you.