With Carson Fulmer gone, Lucas Giolito is feeling the heat

It remains to be seen what Carson Fulmer’s demotion does for Carson Fulmer, but for the White Sox, it addressed a major speed bump in the rotation. It’s not a complete coincidence that White Sox starters strung together five consecutive quality starts after Fulmer’s absence.

The Sox also established a certain level of accountability. They drew a line between “patience for development in a rebuilding year” and “this is supposed to be Major League Baseball,” and now it can be wielded as a precedent for other starters flirting with an option.

The White Sox beat writers are doing so after a particularly ugly outing from Lucas Giolito. He gave up seven runs while recording just four outs, and his descent into disaster was entirely self-induced. He walked three consecutive batters with two outs in the first inning and never recovered.

I wrote in my column for The Athletic that Fulmer provided a lot of cover for other White Sox starters, and Giolito would be the next to face intense scrutiny after Fulmer suffered the consequences. Giolito invited it with his performance against the Orioles, setting up if/then logic that requires work to refute. Rick Renteria had to use a lot of words to distinguish the two starters:

“I don’t see them anywhere near each other,” Renteria said. “They’re two different competitors in terms of the outcomes that they’ve had. Lucas has at least had situations in which he might have struggled early and been able to gain some confidence through the middle rounds of his start and continue to propel himself to finish some ballgames, give us six or seven innings at times. So it’s two different guys. […]

“With Gio, I expect that we would have a nice clean start from the beginning, but when he doesn’t I still feel like if he gets through it he’ll settle down and continue to hammer away at what he needs to do in order to get deeper into a ballgame, and that was a little different with Carson. With Carson it was right from the get-go he was struggling, and he had a difficult time extending his outings after the third or fourth because it just kept getting too deep into his pitch count and not really hammering the strike zone as much.”

That’s kind of true. Fulmer’s performance was such that Giolito’s ERA is still a half-run better even after Thursday’s disaster. Though it didn’t look pretty, Giolito had averaged five innings over his previous five starts, while Fulmer couldn’t get out of the fourth in any his three May outings.

It’s also true that there gets to a point where degrees of awfulness aren’t worth differentiating. Giolito leads all of baseball in earned runs and hit batters, and the latter category erases the gap between Giolito and Tyler Chatwood on the walks leaderboard:

• Giolito: 37 BB + 10 HBP = 47
• Chatwood: 40 BB + 2 HBP = 42

The White Sox typically don’t telegraph demotions, leaving it up to the discerning reader and listener to determine when one is coming. Miguel Gonzalez served as the latest reminder last month. Renteria said he had no thoughts of skipping Gonzalez (or worse) in the aftermath of a dud, only for the Sox to shelve Gonzalez as his next start approached.

(Gonzalez-related aside: The White Sox moved him and his balky shoulder to the 60-day disabled list on Thursday to open a spot on the 40-man roster for catcher Dustin Garneau, whom the White Sox purchased from Oakland.)

While Giolito’s performance screams “SEND HIM DOWN,” I don’t think the White Sox have put a price lock on a flight to Charlotte. Compare Renteria’s defense of Giolito above to what he said about Fulmer two starts ago:

“It would be premature for me to comment on that right now,” Sox manager Rick Renteria said when asked if Fulmer was in danger of losing his job. “We’ll sit down and talk about it, but right now he’s still slated to make that next start. We’ll see what we can figure out and we’ll see if we can put him back on track and continue to move forward.”

The White Sox let Fulmer start one more game, but the media relations department had the press release ready for sending as soon as the 27th out was recorded. I don’t see Giolito’s demotion being similarly imminent. Or, to put it another way, if Giolito is on similarly thin ice, the White Sox have never deployed a smokescreen so thick.

Then again, Giolito isn’t protected from external factors that could also dictate a decision. Assuming Carlos Rodon suffered no ill effects from the line drive to his forehead, he should be ready for a rotation spot two turns from now.

There’s also the fact that Fulmer’s replacement pitched pretty damn well against the same team that stomped Giolito a day later.

Look at these two lines:

I’d normally accompany this with a request to guess which line belonged to the top prospect, and which one belonged to the recently outrighted Rule 5 pick, but you just lived it.

Dylan Covey looked great on Wednesday. He picked up the victory to run his career record toooooooooooo … 1-8 with a 7.05 ERA, which is why it’s hard to summon tremendous enthusiasm. Still, Covey had pitched well in Charlotte, and he’s served a purpose in both his starts with the White Sox this season.

He may serve a larger purpose as a sort of reality check for the more touted White Sox starters. I’d mentioned this idea in my Athletic column:

Fulmer’s demotion feels especially damning because the Sox replaced him with Dylan Covey. There’s dignity in losing a rotation spot to a fully healthy Carlos Rodón, or being the most vulnerable starter at the time the Sox stopped pretending Michael Kopech’s changeup matters that much. Credit Covey for succeeding in Charlotte, but he’s not the kind of talent that bends a roster to his will. The move is purely a reflection of Fulmer’s issues.

From here, Covey could be used as a measuring stick for Giolito, as it makes the “replacement level” concept more tangible. Covey is playing the role of Triple-A Starter with a Decent Arm and an Idea of Where His Stuff Is Going, at least until he reinforces his Baltimore start a couple times over. If Giolito can’t keep up with the likes of Covey or Hector Santiago, he certainly has nowhere to hide when Rodon and Michael Kopech are ready.

Take a second to support Sox Machine on Patreon