Lucas Giolito: Rejoining Shohei Ohtani with the Los Angeles Dodgers ‘Would Be Really Cool’

LOS ANGELES — Lucas Giolito was Shohei Ohtani’s teammate last season with the Los Angeles Angels and as both pitchers navigate free agency Giolito smiles when he’s asked what Ohtani will do.   

“I don’t know what team Shohei is going to sign with but I know he wants to win,” Giiolito told The Messenger. “That’s the most important thing to him. My biggest thing for him is I want to see him continue to do what he does best on both sides of the field, pitching and hitting in big games.”  

Ohtani underwent elbow surgery two months ago but the two-way star is expected to hit in 2024 and return to the mound as a pitcher in 2025. The bigger question is if he will do so with the Angels, a franchise that has finished below .500 the past eight seasons despite having Mike Trout (and Ohtani for the past six seasons) and hasn’t won a postseason game since 2009 when Ohtani and Giolito were just 15 years old.

Gilolito, 29, wouldn’t say if he thinks that recent history eliminates the Angels from contention, but he believes the player he got to know in Anaheim works every day with the goal of playing meaningful games in October.

“The biggest thing that struck me about Shohei was his work ethic,” Giolito said. “I knew that he worked hard. You have to work hard to be able to do what he does because no one else does it but it was like, ‘Holy crap!’ The amount of work he put in was unbelievable. It was mostly on the mental part when it came to scouting opponents. He would be warming up to go pitch in a game but would also be watching video of the opposing pitcher because he was also hitting in that game, and vice versa. He was doing that all the time with the iPad in his hand. His level of preparation is unmatched.”

There’s a chance the two could team up again in Los Angeles with the Dodgers, a franchise that has advanced to the postseason and played in the division series every year since 2013. It would be a homecoming for Giolito, who was born in Burbank, grew up in Santa Monica and went to Harvard-Westlake High School in Studio City. He had committed to playing baseball at UCLA before being selected in the first round of the 2012 MLB Draft by the Washington Nationals.   

“We’ll see,” Giolito said when asked about teaming up with Ohtani again. “That would be really cool.”

Giolito certainly would like a do-over of their short stint as teammates earlier this year. He still shakes his head when he thinks back to his one month playing back in Southern California last season. The Angels had just won eight of nine games to move to 54-49 but were still four games out of the final American League wild card spot. While there was talk of the Angels trading Ohtani, they surprised many by keeping him and trading two top prospects to the Chicago White Sox for Giolito and reliever Reynaldo Lopez.

About one month later, after falling to 63-70, the Angels waived Giolito, Lopez and nearly a quarter of their roster. Giolito and Lopez signed with the Cleveland Guardians and finished out their season with them.

“It was a whirlwind, it was crazy,” said Giolito, who struggled on the mound after leaving Chicago. “I was with the White Sox for seven years so it was very much home for me. I kind of knew I was going to get traded but once it happens, you’re still like, ‘Oh man, this is real now.’ You have to pick up all your stuff and go and meet a bunch of new guys. That’s the one thing with the two teams I played on during a two-month span, the Angels and the Guardians, all the people I met in both of those organizations, they were super welcoming. I’ll look back on that side very fondly but the baseball side, not so much. I feel like I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform more so than I should have. I didn’t have the greatest couple of months there. You live and you learn. Baseball is a game of failure and now I’m working on what’s next. I’m a free agent so I want to sign with a team and go get after it again.”      

Giolito, like Ohtani, would like a shot at a World Series. He was an all-star in 2019, pitched a no-hitter in 2020 and was having a good run with the White Sox before bouncing around at the end of last season and watching his ERA balloon in the process.

“You work really, really hard and you’re very fortunate as a player to reach free agency so I know I’m very lucky in that aspect to be in this position because a lot of players don’t make it this far in their career,” Giolito said. “Unfortunately, because of the way I played last season I’m not going out there thinking I'm going to get this gigantic megadeal that I would have envisioned in the past. It’s more like we’ll see how it goes. I’m interested in winning as well. Last season and the season before were rough in that aspect with the teams I played on so I would love to be able to help in that aspect wherever I go and having that consistent winning baseball, making it to the playoffs and having a good playoff run. That’s all any player dreams of. Having a chance to get to the World Series and winning that final game and putting that ring on before the next season.”

If he is able to return to Los Angeles to play for his hometown Dodgers, he would be returning to where he not only dreamt of one day becoming a major league pitcher but also a video game developer. His father, Rick Giolito, created some of the biggest franchises in Electronic Arts history such as Medal of Honor and Knockout Kings.

“It was a dream as a kid with my dad working at EA in their heyday,” Gioloto said. “His biggest title, Medal of Honor, was Call of Duty before Call of Duty. I was always trying to go to the office with my dad. He worked a lot. That’s the culture in the gaming industry. I was always trying to go to the office and I really gravitated towards the artists and designers. They would let me into their office and I would be peering over their shoulders while they were working on the computer, creating the maps and creating the character models. I got a little bit of an insight of what it was like to create video games at a young age. It fueled my passion for art and how much work it takes to put these things together. I always enjoyed it and always had a love for it because it’s what my dad did and what I got to witness.”

Giolito is an avid Call of Duty fan today and still has aspirations of becoming a video game developer when his playing days are over. He might even get a head start if he signs with a team in Southern California this offseason.   

“I would be trying to produce video games if I wasn’t playing baseball and I would still like to when I’m done playing,” he said. “My biggest passion is baseball but when it comes to hobbies and passions outside of baseball, number one after that is gaming. It’s definitely a space I would love to get involved with post-career and even a little bit during my career. I talked with San Diego Studio and they do the MLB The Show games and I was fortunate enough to get a tour there. I also got a tour of Infinity Ward out in L.A. last year and that was a huge highlight for me because I’m a huge fan of the Call of Duty franchise.”

Before Giolito transitions into his future career in video games, he would like to make one World Series run before he retires. If that happens to be back home in Los Angeles with Ohtani, even better.