South Side Sox Player of the Week (July 3-9): Lucas Giolito

Lack of leadership. General apathy. Cliques and disenchantment.

It’s hard to gauge how distracting and damaging the current clubhouse commotion might be to Lucas Giolito and his fellow starters. That’s on top of a season chock-full of injury and disappointment.

But Giolito, who led this team on the upswing of the rebuild, now crawls through a swampy quagmire, dragging an ERA of 6.58 over his last seven appearances.

Something is clearly off-kilter.

Despite his struggles, Giolito came through and showed flashes of his former brilliance last week, gassing the Giants at Oracle Park in a 13-4 win. He also put up five scoreless innings against the Tigers last weekend, before deflating in the sixth and giving up five runs.

It’s hard to blame Tony La Russa for trying to get mileage out of his starters, considering the unreliability of the White Sox bullpen. But perhaps Gio needs strict inning limits as he searches for his stride, much like the Sox have done with Michael Kopech, still stretching out in to a regular starter’s workload.

Bottom line, things aren’t clicking for the White Sox. Every player on the roster needs to dig deep and look to their leaders. Lucas Giolito is vital to this team’s clubhouse chemistry.

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2022 South Side Sox Players of the Week

Tim Anderson (April 8-17)
Tanner Banks (April 18-23)
Lucas Giolito (April 24-May 1)
Dylan Cease (May 2-8)
Michael Kopech (May 9-14)
Davis Martin (May 15-21)
Jake Burger (May 22-29)
Andrew Vaughn (May 30-June 5)
Jake Burger (June 6-12)
Johnny Cueto (June 13-18)
Andrew Vaughn (June 19-25)
Dylan Cease (June 26-July 2)
Lucas Giolito (July 3-9)

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MVP Standings

Dylan Cease (72.1)
Andrew Vaughn (47.4)
Michael Kopech (47.2)
Johnny Cueto (43.1)
Lucas Giolito (31.6)
José Abreu (23.0)
Luis Robert (19.9)
Jake Burger (19.4)
Tanner Banks (17.0)
Matt Foster (11.3)

Cold Cat Standings

Tony La Russa (-57.2)
Leury García (-46.9)
Josh Harrison (-32.2)
Joe Kelly (-28.9)
Yoán Moncada (-24.6)
Liam Hendriks (-21.2)
Kendall Graveman (-19.8)
Aaron Bummer (-18.5)
Gavin Sheets (-15.0)
Yasmani Grandal (-14.0)

In a bit of a shocker, Tim Anderson fell completely out of the Top 10 this week, Rick Hahn has crept up right outside of the Cold Cats Top 10.

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Writer Standings

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If you’re interested in seeing more of Mitch’s work, or if you’d like to purchase original drawings or prints, contact him via Twitter (@soxsketcher), Instagram (@southsidesharpie), or by e-mail at southsidesharpie@gmail.com. Thanks for supporting local artists!