There are a few certainties we know with Lucas Giolito, and we feel comfortable saying that the 6’6″ righty will be on an innings limit in 2016 and that he will dominate the Minors. Giolito enters the 2016 season as Baseball America’s #2 prospect overall in the Minors and the #1 pitching prospect .
What we don’t know is how many innings Giolito will be limited to due to his status as a Tommy John alumni and given his age, he will get the kid glove treatment again in 2016. Giolito’s innings workload increased almost exactly 20% from 2014 to 2015; however, after the 2015 season ended, Giolito headed to Florida for Fall Instructs where he continued to pitch. Rizzo and his braintrust have a plan for the 21 year old Giolito which they won’t make public. If we assume a 20% innings increase above Giolito’s 2015 Single-A and Double-A innings, Giolito would be capped at approximately 141 innings for 2016.
Lucas Giolito can also find himself as an integral piece of the Washington Nationals 2016 team which would make a delayed start to Giolito’s season, like the Nats did with his 2015 season, a potentially wise move that could make sense. Giolito didn’t make his 1st of the 2015 season until May 8th of 2015 when Giolito pitched at Single-A Potomac . That allowed Giolito to pitch until the end of the season when he was promoted to the Double-A Harrisburg Senators.
We have graphed Giolito’s 2016 innings and K/9 and while the innings can go higher we projected a much lower K/9 than FanGraphs at 6.66.
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