Particularly the velocity spring training we were told he regained most of his stuff and was sitting at 93-95 MPH again. Instead he's lost so far an average of over 1.3 MPH off his fastball in 2017 and 2.2 MPH since 2016. He's barely hitting 90's most nights.

Is there something wrong with his arm?

I doubt it.  My guess is that he is giving up velocity for movement and control.

21 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

I doubt it.  My guess is that he is giving up velocity for movement and control.

With a BB/9 of 8.55?

35 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

I doubt it.  My guess is that he is giving up velocity for movement and control.

Uhhhh

The velocity drop has been part of a multi-year pattern which is what makes it most concerning. In Spring Training this year, Lucas was saying that last year part of his problem was trying to throw as hard as he could to regain lost velocity. At some point we might want to ask where it went.

When Volstad is basically averaging right around the same velocity in his start after being a journeyman for the last decade...it's about more than throwing fastballs at less than full max effort to get more movement and control.

In fact, it ironically seems to be making his control even worse.

Strikeouts are way down, and that's because he has been behind in counts (until last start IP/H ratio was fine)...and hasn't been able to get swings and misses with his offspeed stuff.

The SINGLE biggest issue is walking almost a batter per inning.  He's well over his walk total of 2017 in the big leagues with barely 20 innings pitched this year so far.

 

Definitely a concern, however this was a major worry going into last year too and he pitched real well, Coop has to work with him

I still think there's a #2/3 starter in there somewhere. Everyone compares him to Floyd. Floyd had lost considerable velocity when he was traded here(was throwing 89-91 and maxing at 93 vs 94-96 as a top prospect, similar to Giolito) and eventually after being able to finally repeat his mechanics was able to get it back. Floyd struggled during his first stint with the big club, and made great strides his second year with the Sox, even at lower velocity. I think the same will eventually happen with Giolito. We probably won't see the best of Giolito until the 2nd half of 2019 or 1st half of 2020. I'm willing to be patient, because Coop has a track record with Floyd. 

Wasn't he throwing 94-96 this spring? Is he consciously trying to throw slower, or did he get dead arm this quickly from the spring? 

9 hours ago, JoeCoolMan24 said:

Wasn't he throwing 94-96 this spring? Is he consciously trying to throw slower, or did he get dead arm this quickly from the spring? 

I think this is a conscious decision that he's trying to work on repeating his delivery as much as possible and sacrificing a bit of velocity to do that. Once he gets a repetitive groove in his delivery that he's comfortable with then hopefully he can push the effort back upwards more. In the game thread last weekend there was someone saying they heard specifically that this was what he was working on, and it makes sense.

It also could be due to weather. Nate Jones was back up to 98-100 yesterday when the temp was about 60. He was 96 most of the time when the games were in the 40s and 30s.  

His fastball has been off a tick or two, but his curve has been pretty terrible.  The curve is his out pitch and what worked well for him last year.  He needs to regain that.  Some of that may be the cold...I guess we'll see. 

12 minutes ago, kmcmahon817 said:

His fastball has been off a tick or two, but his curve has been pretty terrible.  The curve is his out pitch and what worked well for him last year.  He needs to regain that.  Some of that may be the cold...I guess we'll see. 

This is fake news, his curve was awful last year also. Only two swing and misses on it.  He was getting strike outs last year on high fastballs, low changeups and his slider to righties. 

13 minutes ago, kmcmahon817 said:

His fastball has been off a tick or two, but his curve has been pretty terrible.  The curve is his out pitch and what worked well for him last year.  He needs to regain that.  Some of that may be the cold...I guess we'll see. 

He had 2 swing and misses on his curve last year

Just now, fathom said:

This is fake news, his curve was awful last year also. Only two swing and misses on it.  He was getting strike outs last year on high fastballs, low changeups and his slider to righties. 

Jinx

16 minutes ago, fathom said:

This is fake news, his curve was awful last year also. Only two swing and misses on it.  He was getting strike outs last year on high fastballs, low changeups and his slider to righties. 

Fair enough. 

https://670thescore.radio.com/white-sox-lucas-giolito-struggles-balance-command-focus

I can only hope that they're watching video of his 2015 starts in the minors. Giolito needs to get back to that delivery. 

Quote

Originally Posted By Bruce Levine

Giolito is working with Cooper to improve his delivery for his next outing. The use of video is sometimes included in the preparation to point out mechanical glitches.

"Lucas is an intelligent kid," Cooper said. "He is a smart kid. The whole group of young pitchers is. We do plenty of video work. I don't want him to watch his last outing, because I don't want him watching a bad movie twice. We know what he was doing wrong. We will use the video when we need to."

Giolito was humbled by his poor outing against Houston.

"As a pitcher, you are kind of out there on that island," Giolito said. "You want to stay within your ability and make your pitches. At the same time, you are competing against another squad. It's a little bit a balance of both."

 

Edited April 25, 20188 yr by Jack Parkman

Granted I'm no Don Cooper but how fucking long does it take to fix a guy's delivery and the entire time you've been working on it he's also lost about 3mph off his fastball?

Doesn't make any sense.  I hope he's not injured but part of me thinks well hell, maybe if he's injured they can fix whatever the hell is wrong.

6 minutes ago, chitownsportsfan said:

Granted I'm no Don Cooper but how fucking long does it take to fix a guy's delivery and the entire time you've been working on it he's also lost about 3mph off his fastball?

Doesn't make any sense.  I hope he's not injured but part of me thinks well hell, maybe if he's injured they can fix whatever the hell is wrong.

He's been having trouble repeating it for 2+ seasons now, ever since the Washington messed with a good thing. This is the classic example of what can go wrong if you try to fix something that isn't broken. The Sox aren't at fault for that, but Giolito probably wouldn't have been available via trade otherwise. 

 

Edited April 25, 20188 yr by Jack Parkman

3 minutes ago, chitownsportsfan said:

Granted I'm no Don Cooper but how fucking long does it take to fix a guy's delivery and the entire time you've been working on it he's also lost about 3mph off his fastball?

Doesn't make any sense.  I hope he's not injured but part of me thinks well hell, maybe if he's injured they can fix whatever the hell is wrong.

I mean when someone loses command and velocity of their fastball like this it's usually an arm issue.

Not always of course some guys just lose their stuff and command at the same time but more often then not you see a drop off like this and the next thing you know he's on the DL

1 hour ago, chitownsportsfan said:

Granted I'm no Don Cooper but how fucking long does it take to fix a guy's delivery and the entire time you've been working on it he's also lost about 3mph off his fastball?

Doesn't make any sense.  I hope he's not injured but part of me thinks well hell, maybe if he's injured they can fix whatever the hell is wrong.

Think of something you have done the exact same way your entire life, and try to do it differently.

19 walks and 9 strikeouts.

He can't find the strik1e zone.

Well, one thing's for sure...tomorrow's start for Giolito is going to be under a magnifying glass for all the armchair psychologists out there in viewing land.

I never saw much substantiation to the allegation that Giolito had better velocity in the spring. I think he *felt* good and perhaps hit 94-95 sometimes and the "Giolito has his fastball back" story spun out of control from there.

31 minutes ago, Jake said:

I never saw much substantiation to the allegation that Giolito had better velocity in the spring. I think he *felt* good and perhaps hit 94-95 sometimes and the "Giolito has his fastball back" story spun out of control from there.

IIRC, Eno or Jeff Sullivan or one of the saberheads had a list of biggest velocity spikes from 2017 to spring of 2018, and he cited Giolito as being #1 I believe, and seemed to buy in to the idea that he had turned it around.