BOSTON -- Early May can be a mixed bag for weather in Boston. One day could be 85 degrees and sunny, the next high 50s with wind and rain.
Unfortunately for Lucas Giolito, his first start in a Red Sox uniform at Fenway Park came on the latter.
Giolito returned to a big league mound on April 30 in Toronto for the first time after undergoing an internal bracing procedure on his ulnar collateral ligament. He cruised through the first five innings of his season debut before giving up three runs in the sixth.
Looking to build off that encouraging first outing, Giolito took the (very wet) mound at Fenway after a 31-minute rain delay in Tuesday’s series opener against the Rangers. He bounced back from heavy traffic in the first, but then gave up a five-spot in the fourth and was replaced by Brennan Bernardino in an eventual 6-1 loss to Texas.
“Didn’t have command. That was probably what did me in,” Giolito said. “I threw one slider, bounced it, led to scoring a run. Then we kind of shied away from it, a fastball-changeup approach. But unlike the last outing, I didn’t have the same juice behind it. I didn’t have command either, yanking a lot of pitches across, leaving a lot of pitches middle. Those are the ones, they didn’t let me get away with mistakes.”
The weather proved to be a challenge for both teams from the jump. Command was an obvious issue early on, with both Giolito and Rangers starter Nathan Eovaldi throwing a wild pitch in the first. Warming up in between innings, Giolito slipped and caught himself on the front-end of the mound. In the third, Carlos Narváez lost his bat to the stands.
As the game went on, the rain eventually slowed. But Giolito’s struggles persisted. Giolito passed on using the messy weather as an excuse, saying he actually felt he pitched better in the heavier rain before the skies let up in the fourth.
The right-hander opened that fateful inning with back-to-back ground-rule doubles before giving up five singles and a sacrifice fly. Five of his six hard hits allowed came in that troublesome fourth.
“Think command was off compared to Toronto,” manager Alex Cora said. “They put some good at-bats. Back-to-back doubles, [Marcus] Semien hit a ground ball the other way, gets rewarded [with a] sac fly. And then some hits early in counts. Others we didn’t put them away with two strikes. So just a tough one. Turn the page, be ready for the next one.”
The four-seam and changeup-heavy pitcher threw the two pitches a combined 72 times (of his 74 total pitches) with eight of his 10 hits allowed coming on the fastball. Last week in Toronto, Blue Jays batters hit .091 against his four-seam with five of his seven strikeouts coming on the pitch. On Tuesday, Giolito’s two strikeouts came on his changeup.
“Probably could have tried,” Giolito said when asked about expanding his pitch mix. “Looking back on it, maybe lean on the slider more, see if we could get that going. I have the ability to pitch with two pitches, but they have to be good. And they weren’t good today, so they made me pay for it.”
The slider will be a point of focus for Giolito in between starts, as well as mastering the command of his fastball and changeup from both sides of the plate as he works his way back into his first Major League season since 2023.
Despite having to turn to relief earlier than they’d wanted, the Red Sox were able to preserve their bullpen in the midst of a stretch of 25 games in 27 days, thanks to strong outings from Bernardino and Sean Newcomb.
Bernardino came on to strike out Corey Seager in an eight-pitch at-bat and pitched a clean fifth inning before Newcomb made his first appearance since April 27 and closed out the game with four scoreless innings.
“Newcomb was excellent. He gave us more than enough,” Cora said. “He basically saved our bullpen for the rest of the series. Changing speeds, throwing strikes, expanding when he needed. And he was really good.
“And Bernie, he’s been doing that the whole season. Especially against righties, he’s doing a good job using that cutter and the changeup. Both of them did an amazing job for us and hopefully they set us up to win the series.”