Lucas Giolito will tell you he’s always been a night owl.
“It’s not very fun,” he said Sunday afternoon of early mornings. “Ever since I was a kid, I would stay up super late reading and then it turned into staying up super late playing video games, and I’ve just done that ever since. My excuse is, I like to say that I prime myself for 7 p.m. being my locked-in hours, but obviously you have to make an adjustment for a day like today.”
In order to prepare to throw his first pitch at 11:35 a.m. Sunday, the Red Sox right-hander changed his schedule “the whole week leading up” to Sunday, conditioning himself to get to bed earlier and wake up early. On Saturday night he went to bed at midnight and woke up at 8 a.m.
“I’d say it was more important waking up earlier, getting yourself up, getting outside, moving around, and yeah then it kind of puts you into a better position to where, when I woke up this morning, I wasn’t horribly groggy,” he explained.
After eight innings of one-run, three-hit ball and a series sweep of the Astros, Giolito’s excellent second morning start of the season prompted his manager to give him a new nickname.
“We were joking because he’s not a morning person. He’s not,” Cora said. “The one in Washington and the one today. He’s been amazing, so ‘AM Gio.’ He was really good.”
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