Lucas Giolito uses MLB The Show to prepare for opponents originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
MLB teams have robust analytics and video departments to break down the numbers and scout for opponents.
But Chicago White Sox starter Lucas Giolito uses something else to prepare for his starts, the video game MLB: The Show.
“I do my like video game thing with MLB: The Showso I can really like kind of commit that stuff to memory and like practice like my sequences,” Giolito told The Chris Rose Rotation podcast. “Oh, I’m in this situation, what are the pitches that I feel very confident to get this guy out, get out of this situation.”
There is one problem.
The video game makers dropped his overall rating and now Giolito struggles to pitch with his video game character.
“I had a down year last year, so they made me like a 70 overall. So it’s like way harder to pitch with myself than it used to be,” Giolito said. “I think on MLB: The ShowI used to be like in the low 80s for my overall rating and I could like throw a slider and it would like go in the general direction that I aimed.
“Whereas now, since they made me really s**tty when I was preparing for my Twins game, it was actually hilarious because I knew that the slider would be an important pitch for me against the Twins.
“And I’m practicing and like to certain guys, alright, I really want to get the slider to this location and I would like to do the inputs. It’d be good. And then the pitch would come out of my hand on the video game, right down the middle, just hanging right down the middle. I’m like, Come on, man.
“I know that hangers happen, but it was like 100% accuracy and then boom, right down the middle, like whoever hit it for a double, I’m like, alright, well, time to deal with that situation.
“So my scouting with myself in the video games can be a little bit more difficult this year. Just because my character isn’t as good.”
In that game against the Twins, Giolito pitched six innings, giving up five hits and one earned run. He also struck out seven, a season-high.
It’s a creative and entertaining way to prepare in your free time. You can get put in scenarios and need to react and make decisions based on situations, this creates something organically and forces someone to think critically in the moment.
This isn’t entirely unheard of in professional sports. Race car drivers have built simulators to prepare for courses. Teddy Bridgewater used video games to learn his playbook when he was a rookie with the Minnesota Vikings.
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