Lucas Giolito roughed up again as Guardians lose to Reds 11-7

Lucas Giolito's time in a Cleveland Guardians uniform continues to be an exercise in frustration.

After appearing to settle down just a bit from his lackluster debut, Giolito found himself struggling with command. When the 29-year-old was not issuing one of his five walks and finding a way to get the ball over the plate, it ended up being batting practice for the Cincinnati Reds.

Giolito was knocked around by Cincinnati to the tune of five runs allowed on four hits and five walks. The concerning part is that for the third time in five games, Giolito surrendered three long balls to Cincinnati. It is incredibly difficult to win games when a starting pitcher is giving up round trippers at this rate. In fact, the only game which the Guardians have won with Giolito on the mound is the only start where he did not give up a home run.

Allowing multiple home runs in a game has been a recurring issue for Giolito in 2023. The former White Sox and Angels pitcher has given up two or more home runs in 11 starts this season and three in six, three of those have come since being claimed on waivers by the Guardians.

It is incredibly easy to pin the entiretiy of Tuesday's loss on Giolito. Whilt a lot of the fault should be pointed in his direction, it is not all on him. The Guardians were able to score seven runs in the first four innnings, but were kept off the scoreboard for the remainder of the contest. Additionally, the combination of Eli Morgan, James Karinchak, Nick Sandlin, and Xzavion Curry saw six runs come across to score (four earned) in 4.2 innings on the mound.

The unfortunate part of this for Giolito is that he is esssentially in audition for his next job mode, and he is not exaclty leaving a positive impression at the moment. It was incredibly unlikely that Giolito was going to return to Cleveland next year due to the volume of quality arms that already exist in their rotation, but now Giolito may have to sign a flier contract in an attempt to re-establish his value to other ballclubs. That is unless a team is banking on his time in Los Angeles and Cleveland this season being the outlier with his return to form earlier this season in Chicago being genuine.