Lucas Giolito was the worst pitcher in baseball in 2018. After seven solid starts with the White Sox in 2017, Giolito went 10-13 with a 6.13 ERA while allowing the most earned runs in the majors (118) and most walks in the American League (90). Giolito was struggling both physically and mentally.
However, Giolito bounced right back from that and finished sixth in Cy Young Award voting the following year. he's since spent time with the Angels and Guardians before joining the Boston Red Sox this offseason.
Giolito opened up about his battle with crippling anxiety in 2018 while appearing on the Audacy Sports Podcast “Baseball Isn’t Boring” on Monday.
“I don’t know if it was developed or just something I ignored for a long time but in 2018 it really came to fruition,” Giolito said. “It was my first full season in the big leagues and I was definitely -- physically I was out of sync a lot of the time. I had this long arm action and my timing was off consistently which led to not really having consistency as a pitcher.
“It’s hard to remember exactly but somewhere along the way in that season in 2018, certain outings I’d go out there not necessarily feeling the most confident and if bad things started to happen in the first inning I would start to feel a lot of symptoms of performance anxiety. They’d come to fruition in physical sensations like losing feeling in my extremities, like my hands and my legs.”
Giolito was hampered by anxiety that would ramp up even more if things weren’t going well.
“So if I walked the leadoff batter it would start to build up, then I give up a hit or I walk another guy. These things would start to build up to where I’d lose feeling and sometimes if it got really bad and it ended up being a really long inning I’d feel kind of separation from my body to where I’m watching myself in the third person just fail. So it wasn’t very fun. Those were a bunch of my blowup games in 2018.”
Giolito had four starts of two innings or fewer in 2018. He allowed at least seven earned runs in five outings as well -- including three of those shorter starts.
“It’s not like every outing of 2018 I was dealing with that; every once in a while I would go out there and just not have control and I would feel these symptoms,” he continued. “I was working with the sports psychologist to try to keep that at bay and all sorts of things like that but it’s hard to say -- I don’t think there’s like one thing that triggered it.”
While some baseball players deal with the yips, this was something different for Giolito.
“I wasn’t missing wildly or losing the ability to throw a baseball. I’d be experiencing this and then still throw a 94 mph fastball,” he said. “It was like things were moving extremely fast and I didn’t have good feel. So when that happens you’re going to be spraying a little bit. Obviously, you look back at my stats in 2018 I think I led the league in walks. I’m spraying the ball and falling behind hitters and then serving up cookies for them to hit. Stuff like that. Just being out there with zero confidence whatsoever and then experiencing these symptoms, it’s not really a good combination to go out and compete at this level.”
Giolito went into that offseason knowing that something had to change. He adopted a shorter arm motion and started using neurofeedback from Brainkanix.
“It was a very active way to mentally train going out there and performing under pressure. The previous year I was succumbing to that pressure and I was feeling the anxiety and these things were really taking control,” Giolito explained. “And then I did all this training to really attack that where it’s like yeah, the pressure’s there. That’s good. Yeah, I’m going to feel anxious. That’s good. Live with that but also I’m really good at this so let me have confidence in myself and go out there and just execute and good things will happen.”