Benetti: Rave reviews for Giolito and his no-hitter
This off-season for Lucas Giolito, "Netflix and chill" wasn't so chill.
"I was hanging out at home, watching some TV with one of my best buddies, Max Fried," Giolito recalled. "He was on his phone, and he's like, 'Hey man, you should probably check Twitter, I think something happened.' "
The pitcher who had grown up surrounded by actors was traded during an episode of "This is Us."
Among other family screen credits, his dad, Rick, was in "Who's the Boss?" and his mom. Lindsay, had a role on "Lost."
Giolito's uncle Mark Frost is one of the co-creators of the 1990s cult sensation "Twin Peaks," which rebooted last Sunday. In his first start after the new series debut, nephew Lucas spun his own memorable yarn: a no-hitter in Triple-A in a seven-inning game with Charlotte.
"It was special," Giolito said. "It was great to have my first professional no-hitter under my belt and take that and work from there."
It wasn't "Who Killed Laura Palmer?" but the seventh inning was something of a cliffhanger. Giolito went to 3-0 on the first three batters of the final inning.
The opponent was the Syracuse Chiefs, a team he pitched for seven times last season. The Sox got Giolito in an off-season deal that sent Adam Eaton to Washington. In 2016, before he went to Triple-A, Giolito came to Washington from Double-A Harrisburg to make his major-league debut June 28, only to run into 55 minutes of meteorological difficulties.
"It was raining, the game was delayed, I was sitting in my locker for like an hour, ready to go, kind of anxious, kind of nervous," he remembered. "It's like an out-of-body thing, warming up in the pen, a lot of fans standing up and cheering for you.
"It was a super-crazy experience until I got the ball back from the third baseman after my warmup pitches, stepped on the mound and threw my first pitch. After the first pitch, it felt like any other game."
If that was all he did in the big leagues last season, you might have called it a darn fine cup of coffee. Giolito threw 4 innings of shutout ball. He made 3 other starts and 2 relief appearances and finished the season with a 6.75 ERA. That led Giolito to set out at spring training with a goal of more similarity from outing to outing.
"I want to be a consistent starting pitcher and go out and give the team a chance to win every time," Giolito told me in March in Arizona. "To do that at the big-league level, it takes a strong work ethic, it takes being able to repeat your delivery well, being able to slow the game down when it starts to speed up. So, I'm basically trying to put all those things together."
Giolito is currently the eighth-rated prospect in baseball and the second-best prospect in the White Sox's farm system, according to MLB.com. His first 6 starts in Triple-A Charlotte, though, left him with an ERA of 7.31. He thinks Thursday's performance was something of a turning point.
"It was kind of that click I was looking for with everything, feeling confidence on the mound, commanding my pitches much better and just getting through the lineup a few times and feeling good about it," he said.
Lucas Giolito, it seems, is back to his critically acclaimed form.
• Jason Benetti is a play-by-play broadcaster for the Chicago White Sox, as well as ESPN. Follow him on Twitter @jasonbenetti.