Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow has been open about Boston’s need to add strength and depth to Boston’s starting rotation, but most attention around his quest for pitching has centered around the need for a No. 2 starter to support staff ace Garrett Crochet.
But what about a solid No. 3 starter? One longtime Red Sox reporter and expert believes that the team has one right under its collective nose, but Breslow will need to make a decision that is sure to be controversial in order to secure him.
In the 2023-2024 offseason, Breslow — then just a few months into his job — signed free agent right-hander and former Washington Nationals 2016 first-round draft pick Lucas Giolito to a two-year deal worth $38.5 million.
But the then-29-year-old Giolito got no further than his spring training debut for the Red Sox. He was forced to leave that start with an elbow injury that turned out to require surgery and promptly wiped out his season. In 2025, on the comeback trail, he again left his spring training debut, this time with hamstring tightness.
In late September of this season, Giolito suffered another elbow injury. While not believed to be a serious one this time, it kept the one-time All-Star from making a start in the American League Wild Card Series, which Boston lost to the New York Yankees, and was expected to cause Giolito to miss the entire postseason had the Red Sox advanced.
Now, after a campaign in which he made 26 starts with a solid 3.41 ERA, Giolito is once again eligible for free agency, assuming he, as expected, declines the mutual option he holds with the team that would pay him $19 million in 2026.
But Breslow can guarantee that the Red Sox receive compensation if Giolito walks away and, at the same time, make it somewhat less likely that another team will sign him, by extending the former Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Angels hurler a qualifying offer.
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And McAdam, speaking on Thursday’s “Fenway Rundown” podcast, says Breslow should do it.
What does that mean?
Each year, free agents who meet certain qualifications — they have spent the entire previous season with one team, and have never before received a qualifying offer — may be offered a one-year contract by their current team at an amount pre-determined under the MLB collective bargaining agreement. If the player declines the qualifying offer, his previous team is entitled to an extra draft pick as compensation.
This year, the qualifying offer is set at $22.025 million. That’s what the Red Sox may offer Giolito — effectively a $3 million raise over what he would receive by taking the mutual option.
“I think they should give it to him,” McAdam said on the podcast brushing aside arguments that were the Red Sox to pay that sum to Giolito, they could not afford the No. 2 starter they desperately need. “They can afford to pay him 22.025 million to be the No. 3 guy, or the No. 4.”
Saying that he believes the Red Sox will, in fact, acquire a No. 2 starter via the trade route, McAdam added that the lesson the Boston must learn from 2025 is “how many starters you need to get through, in the long 162 game season. And they didn’t have nearly enough.”
Historically, only about 10 percent of players who have received a qualifying offer have accepted it, in the 13 years that system has been in place. If Giolito declines, the Red Sox would receive a pick that would come in a supplementary round between the fourth and fifth in next year’s draft.
That is due to the fact that the club exceeded the luxury tax limit.
In 2022, the Red Sox had the extra pick because they extended a qualifying offer to pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez, who declined and signed with the Detroit Tigers instead. That year, the Red Sox received a pick after the second round, at No. 79 overall.
They used the pick to draft a high school outfielder out of Parkland, Florida, named Roman Anthony.
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