Lucas Giolito suffers worrisome injury. Will 'pitching panic' push Red Sox into a move?

Lucas Giolito, expected to front the Boston Red Sox rotation, will be out indefinitely with an elbow injury, and manager Alex Cora told reporters Tuesday that the club is concerned about its severity.

Giolito is due to undergo more testing, and the results could have significant ramifications for both Boston’s season and a handful of unsigned players.

“Not a good day for us,” Cora told reporters at the club’s Fort Myers, Fla., spring training camp.

The Red Sox signed Giolito, 29, to a one-year, $19 million contract with player and team options for the two seasons following. They were banking that new pitching coach Andrew Bailey could reverse Giolito’s fortunes after the 2019 All-Star posted ERAs of 4.90 and 4.88 the past two seasons.

Yet a bounceback year from a former ace was not the large investment fans expected from the Red Sox, who were quickly eliminated from the sweepstakes for Japanese ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed with the Dodgers.

HOT STOVE UPDATES: MLB free agency: Ranking and tracking the top players available.

Now, there may be both fan pressure and greater need to enter the more expensive waters of free agency.

The club has long been connected to free agent lefty Jordan Montgomery, the Texas Rangers’ World Series hero whose wife is interning at a Boston hospital. Montgomery and reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell remain unsigned, with agent Scott Boras content to wait out the market for suitable deals.

Tuesday, first-year Red Sox GM Craig Breslow touted the club's internal options to slide forward in Giolito's absence. Pending free agent Nick Pivetta is the only option who has thrown as many as 179 innings in a professional season; right-hander Brayan Bello is the club's most promising pitcher, but he's never pitched more than 163 innings, and the likes of Kutter Crawford, Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock have fallen far short of that plateau.

“I think over the last couple of weeks I do think it’s become evident that there are a number of guys that we have in camp that appear ready to take a step forward,” Breslow told reporters in Fort Myers. We’ve also maintained that if there’s an opportunity to improve the team through some external acquisition that we needed to be responsible and try to track that down as well. So I think that’s where we currently are.”

Monday, at a press conference announcing third baseman Matt Chapman’s deal with the San Francisco Giants, Boras said the natural course of spring training injury issues may get the market moving for his unsigned clients.

“I think there is a pitching panic going on in Major League Baseball right now," Boras said, hours after Cardinals ace Sonny Gray exited a start with what was diagnosed as a mild hamstring strain, and hours before Cora relayed the news about Giolito.

“We have got so many starting pitchers that are now compromised, maybe short-term, but some long-term, and the calls for elite starters are certainly starting to increase."

Boras noted how the phone had been largely quiet much of the winter for his elite clients, as yet another unusual player market has caused him to pivot  toward short-term, opt-out heavy deals. Perhaps his phone will start to buzz again soon.