Padres' clutch offense masked significant concern in Lucas Giolito's return to Washington D.C.

It wound up being far from the biggest storyline in the San Diego Padres' series against the Washington Nationals -- Fernando Tatis Jr.'s home run curse is FINALLY over -- but in the Friars' game one victory, both Lucas Giolito and Craig Stammen were faced with the reality of returning to their original baseball digs.

Giolito was a first-round pick of the Nats back in 2012, though he only pitched in 21 1/3 innings in 2016 before being included as part of the ill-fated Adam Eaton trade with the White Sox. Likewise, Stammen was a 12th-round pick back in 2005, though he at least lasted seven seasons in the nation's capital before finishing his playing career in San Diego.

Initially, it appeared that returning to their place of baseball origin would be too much too handle; Giolito had his worst start in a Padres uniform, lasting just 2 2/3 innings while surrendering two homers and four runs. A loss seem all but assured, but some clutch offense, including a seventh-inning bomb from Jackson Merrill, bailed the Friars out and secured a 7-5 win.

It's nice to see Merrill (and Tatis) producing at the plate again, but the Padres can't be feeling comfortable about Gioltio after this latest performance.

Lucas Giolito's crummy start against Nationals served as harrowing reminder of his tightrope act

In defense of Giolito, the Nationals' offense has been surprisingly elite this year. Heading into that start, they were the top run-scoring team in the league and ranked top five in everything from wRC+ (109, 4th) to stolen bases (56, 3rd). Facing them on the road was always going to be a more difficult assignment than his previous outings against the Mariners and Athletics.

Still, there were some concerning stats that can't become trends. His spin rates were down by noticeable margins on his three primary pitches (fastball, changeup, slider), and his fastball velocity still hasn't come anywhere close to recovering from its precipitous year-ove-year drop. No matter how good one's secondaries are, it's hard to survive in baseball today with a fastball that averages 90.5 miles per hour.

That's probably a good reason why all three batted-ball events off his four-seamer on Friday wound up being hard hits; the average exit velocity on those instances of contact was 103.4 mph. Combine that with the fact that he didn't generate a single whiff on his heater, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

The Padres aren't expecting Giolito to be anything more than a back-end rotation option. In his first few starts with the team, we saw how he could fill that roll amicably. But this latest outing against his original team is a reminder that he's working with razor-thin margins as a 31-year old.

The last thing the Friars need is another unreliable starter. It's on Giolito to prove that his start against the Nationals was more fluke than trend.

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