Is Washington Nationals' 2012 1st Round Pick Lucas Giolito Ready To Make His GCL Debut?

"But," Rick Giolito said on Baseball Prospectus's Up and In Podcast, "the thought was, 'What if?' What if everything's going well, he's come back, he's pitching his freshman year, pitches his sophomore year and then he goes into his senior year and this happens again? What if his second or third or fourth or fifth start or his last start of his senior year he hurts his elbow again? Well, we're back to square one and we're going to have to go through this again. And at the end of the day, and I told [UCLA baseball coach] John [Savage], I said at the end of the day, we could just not live with the three years of the fear of that possibility happening."

The negotiations went down to the last minutes before the July 15th deadline with Nats' GM Mike Rizzo admitting afterward that, "[There was] a time there that we thought that it was a possibility that it wouldn't get done." According reports from both the team and player the deal was officially agreed upon with just 30 seconds to go before the deadline. "[Giolito] was the coup of our draft," Rizzo told reporters after they'd signed a $2.925M dollar deal, "And we thought that he was a big-time prospect that fell to us at [no.] 16 and to get a guy that we had so far up the board at 16 and then to get him signed. We feel really good about it."

"He'll report to Florida and begin his minor league career," the Nats' GM said, "He'll be on a rehabilitation program and we'll hope to ramp him up to pitching competitively very soon."

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Is Washington Nationals' 2012 1st Round Pick Lucas Giolito Ready To Make His GCL Debut? sbn.to/P7OC0w

— SBNation DC (@sbnationdc) August 13, 2012

• UPDATE:

Lucas' @lgio27 start tomorrow is at home in Viera vs GCL Marlins That's 161 days between starts #ShouldBeWellRested #WishICouldBThere #Nats

— Rick Giolito (@RickGiolito) August 13, 2012