{"id":121795,"date":"2026-05-13T09:31:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T13:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=121795"},"modified":"2026-05-13T09:43:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T13:43:48","slug":"lucas-giolito-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/05\/13\/lucas-giolito-debut\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Starter Is on the Chopping Block With Giolito Set to Debut?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The long and short of it is this: Lucas Giolito<\/a> has to be added to the San Diego Padres’ roster by May 16. In order to do that, someone else needs to leave the club. Newcomer Griffin Canning<\/a>, Michael King<\/a> and Randy V\u00e1squez<\/a> have cemented their places in the rotation.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez<\/a> is on the IL with a nerve injury. Walker Buehler<\/a> and Matt Waldron<\/a> have filled out the final two spots in the starting group. It’s those last two who seem the likeliest to be replaced by Giolito. They’ve both performed adequately, but someone has to leave with Giolito’s imminent debut. So who will it be?<\/p>\n

The Longtime Rival<\/h2>\n

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Buehler had spent almost the entirety of his career with the rival Los Angeles Dodgers before becoming a Padre this offseason. He’s certainly a far cry from the pitcher he was during his time in L.A., but he’s been serviceable for the Friars. So far this season, he owns a 5.20 ERA across 36 1\/3 innings. It’s definitely not an inspiring line, but Buehler’s been a serviceable back-end starter for San Diego.<\/p>\n

His underlying metrics paint a very interesting (if somewhat convoluted) picture. His xERA (4.87) is half a point lower than his actual ERA, suggesting that he’s run into some bad luck. But, at the same time, his xBA (.284) is higher than his actual batting average allowed (.257). So has he run into bad luck or benefited from good luck?<\/p>\n

It’s honestly hard to say, and it’s maybe a bit of both. His pitch mix has changed significantly since his time with the Dodgers. Buehler now primarily utilizes a cutter and knuckle curve, while employing a sweeper and wipeout slider as secondary pitches. Though his fastball velocity is down significantly (95.3 mph in 2021 to 93.9 in 2026), the cutter has still been a solid pitch. But the secondary pitches have been incredible. His slider is generating a whiff percentage of 27.3 while the sweeper is at 32 percent.<\/p>\n

If Buehler can rely on those pitches a little more, while still maintaining their ability to miss bats, it would be a massive improvement to Buehler’s game. Even beyond that, he’s been much more successful than Waldron over a larger sample size. Buehler also has a better pedigree at the MLB level than the knuckleballer, making his chances of keeping a rotation spot much better.<\/p>\n

The Dying Art of the Knuckleballer<\/h2>\n

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The knuckleball used to be a much more common pitch than it is now. That isn’t to say it was common, it wasn’t, but it was more<\/em> common. Pitchers like R.A. Dickey<\/a> and Tim Wakefield<\/a> built their careers on that pitch. Now? Nobody throws it. Well … almost nobody.<\/p>\n

Waldron has been the sole thrower of the knuckleball at the big-league level for a number of years now. He’s done so with varying degrees of success, with his most extensive MLB action coming in 2024. He made 26 starts for the Padres and ended the year with a 4.91 ERA. He hasn’t not found immense success with the pitch, never finding the right way to utilize it in his pitch mix.<\/p>\n

With ace Nick Pivetta going on the injured list for the next few months<\/a>, Waldron earned a spot in the San Diego rotation for the time being. In five starts with the club he owns a 9.28 ERA and 1.83 WHIP (21.1 IP). That line isn’t terrific, but his two most recent starts were solid. Across 10 innings, Waldron had only allowed four runs, pitching more consistently than he ever has.<\/p>\n

That all came crashing down on Tuesday night, when the righty surrendered six runs to the Milwaukee Brewers in the Friars’ loss. With that in mind, Waldron seems more likely to give way to Giolito but he’s out of options. If San Diego wants to move him from the active roster, he’ll need to be designated for assignment.<\/p>\n

Giolito’s Potential Impact<\/h2>\n

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Giolito was signed to add some much-needed depth<\/a> to the San Diego starting rotation. The debuting righty has started four games between Single-A Lake Elsinore and Double-A San Antonio in the Padres’ minor league system. Giolito’s 4.76 ERA is certainly uninspiring, but he’s had a much more impressive 3.60 ERA in his two most recent starts with the Double-A club.<\/p>\n

The Friars’ pitching staff has been solid, even borderline dominant<\/a>, but it’s needed a little something extra to tread water until Pivetta returns from injury. It will likely be a few months until that happens, so Giolito will have plenty of opportunities to make an impact with San Diego.<\/p>\n

Main Image Credit:<\/strong> Paul Rutherford-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The long and short of it is this: Lucas Giolito has to be added to the San Diego Padres’ roster by May 16. In order to do that, someone else needs to leave the club. Newcomer Griffin Canning, Michael King and Randy V\u00e1squez have cemented their places in the rotation. Beyond that, Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5784,"featured_media":121805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,30],"tags":[3867,1303,770,28713,3111,29515,2265],"class_list":["post-121795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-padres","tag-german-marquez","tag-griffin-canning","tag-lucas-giolito","tag-matt-waldron","tag-michael-king","tag-sam-diego-padres","tag-walker-buehler"],"modified_by":"Matthew Nethercott, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5784"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121795"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121807,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121795\/revisions\/121807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}