Lucas Giolito\u2019s first start off the injured list was highly encouraging. The right-hander shut down the Blue Jays for most of his outing, and while he eventually ran out of gas, Giolito gave good reason for optimism going forward.<\/p>\n
But Tuesday night marked a concerning step backwards.<\/p>\n
Playing in soaking wet conditions amid steady rainfall, Giolito was roughed up for six runs and couldn\u2019t get out of the fourth inning in Tuesday\u2019s 6-1 loss to the Texas Rangers. Meanwhile, Nathan Eovaldi delivered a gem for the Rangers, holding his former team to one run over six innings, and the Rangers tallied 16 hits in their first game under new hitting coach Bret Boone.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was terrible,\u201d Giolito said of his performance. \u201cI gave up a bunch of base hits in a row, just not doing my job.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he was off compared to Toronto,\u201d Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. \u201cSome hits early in counts, others we didn\u2019t put them away with two strikes. It\u2019s a tough one, just turn the page and be ready for the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the start of the game was only delayed 31 minutes, rain continued to fall throughout the evening, making for a soggy night of baseball at Fenway Park. The wet conditions had an obvious impact on the game.<\/p>\n
In the top of the first, Texas had runners at the corners and two outs when Giolito had a ball in the dirt bounce just far enough from catcher Carlos Narvaez to allow Wyatt Langford to score. Giolito was also slow to cover the plate, but the Red Sox got a gift when Joc Pederson was subsequently caught in a rundown between first and second to end the inning.<\/p>\n
Eovaldi had several errant pitches in the bottom of the first, one of which allowed Rafael Devers to advance from first to second and another that went over Alex Bregman\u2019s head but wound up hitting his bat for a foul ball.<\/p>\n
Most troubling was when Giolito slipped and tumbled on the mound while warming up for the top of the second. He got up and quickly resumed pitching, but it was not something the Red Sox wanted to see given that the right-hander only recently came off the injured list with a hamstring strain.<\/p>\n
The grounds crew came out and laid down dry soil before Giolito came out again for the top of the third.<\/p>\n
There were other little incidents throughout the remainder of the game, the most notable being when Narvaez\u2019s bat flew out of his hands and into the stands on a swing in the bottom of the third. But the bigger problems for Boston began in the fourth, when the Rangers started spraying the ball all over the field against Giolito.<\/p>\n
Texas scored five runs in the inning on seven hits and a sacrifice fly, sending 10 batters to the plate and taking a 6-0 lead. The Rangers started the rally with back-to-back ground rule doubles, the latter by Pederson to score Corey Seager. Adolis Garcia drove in a run with his sacrifice fly, and then four of the next five Texas batters singled, with Jonah Heim, Josh Smith and Langford each driving in a run while keeping the line moving.<\/p>\n
Giolito was pulled with two outs in the inning after Langford\u2019s single. He finished with six runs allowed on 3.2 innings with 10 hits, a walk and two strikeouts.<\/p>\n
For the second straight outing Giolito largely threw only fastballs and changeups, but this time out his velocity was noticeably down. When he faced the Blue Jays his fastball averaged 93.3 mph and topped out at 96, but on Tuesday against the Rangers he averaged 91.6 and topped out at 93.4.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have command, that was probably what did me in,\u201d Giolito said afterwards. \u201cI threw one slider, I bounced it, led to scoring a run and we kind of shied away from it, fastball-changeup approach but unlike last outing I didn\u2019t have the same juice behind it, I didn\u2019t have command either, yanking a lot of pitches across, leaving a lot of pitches middle. They didn\u2019t let me get away with mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Giolito said he didn\u2019t feel there\u2019s any reason for concern about the reduced velocity, and he also didn\u2019t believe the weather played a role in his performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I\u2019ve pitched in rain games before like way worse than that,\u201d Giolito said. \u201cI actually thought I pitched better when it was raining harder. Once it let up, the fourth inning really did me in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Red Sox finally got some offense going against Eovaldi in the bottom of the sixth, with Bregman hitting a two-out double before Kristian Campbell drove him in with an RBI single. But overall Eovaldi was in full control, limiting Boston to one run, five hits and one walk over six innings while striking out seven.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s so efficient and he\u2019s very aggressive. He keeps evolving to be honest with you, using offspeed more,\u201d Cora said. \u201cThe cutter is becoming a pitch that\u2019s always been good but he doesn\u2019t use it that often, but it\u2019s effective. Changing speeds, on top of the hitters, he did an outstanding job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brennan Bernardino threw 1.1 scoreless innings in relief for Boston, and Sean Newcomb followed with four scoreless innings to help preserve the rest of the bullpen for the remainder of the series.<\/p>\n
The loss drops Boston (18-19) below .500 for the first time since April 15, and the Red Sox have now also lost three straight and five of their last six.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not concerned, it\u2019s part of the season. Are we happy with what\u2019s going on? Of course not. We believe we\u2019re better and it hasn\u2019t happened,\u201d Cora said. \u201cBut we\u2019re going to keep working, we\u2019re going to be better, I know that, hopefully sooner rather than later.\u201d<\/p>\n
The club will look to bounce back on Wednesday when Tanner Houck (0-2, 6.38) takes the mound against Tyler Mahle (3-1, 1.19). First pitch is scheduled for 6:45 p.m.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: May 6, 2025 at 10:02 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lucas Giolito\u2019s first start off the injured list was highly encouraging. The right-hander shut down the Blue Jays…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[858,5,48,585,4,394,149,89,1567,69,3240],"class_list":{"0":"post-6928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas-rangers","8":"tag-alex-cora","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-boston-red-sox","11":"tag-lucas-giolito","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-nathan-eovaldi","14":"tag-rangers","15":"tag-red-sox","16":"tag-texas","17":"tag-texas-rangers","18":"tag-texasrangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114464521327849016","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}