It’s been a long and challenging road for Lucas Giolito.

Once among the most durable and productive starting pitchers in the majors, Giolito has endured one setback after another over the past two years. He missed all of last season after suffering an elbow injury in his first spring training with the Red Sox, and after missing the first month of this year with a hamstring injury struggled to find any sense of consistency.

But recently Giolito finally turned the corner, and over the past month he’s gotten back to being the pitcher the Red Sox believed he could be all along.

As the first half comes to a close Giolito goes into the All-Star break riding one of the hottest stretches of his career. He has delivered six straight quality starts since June 10, and over that stretch he’s allowed only three earned runs over 38.2 innings, good for a 0.70 ERA.

Giolito’s return to form has coincided with the club’s overall resurgence. Since June 7 the Red Sox have a 23-10 record, the best in MLB over that stretch, after starting the season 30-35 before that.

“It’s been a weird long road since the elbow surgery,” Giolito said. “I’ve always been chasing consistency in my career and never had it, and to have that consistent output over the last month definitely is a relieving feeling, for sure.

“But I’m not satisfied,” he added. “I want to keep going, keep pitching well, keep giving the team a really good chance to win every time I get the ball.”

Coming off a chaotic 2023 in which he pitched for three teams after the All-Star break, Giolito signed with the Red Sox in hopes of recapturing some semblance of stability and serving as the workhorse the rotation badly needed at that point. Instead Giolito suffered an elbow injury and underwent internal brace surgery, ending his first season in Boston before it began.

This year he endured another setback when he suffered a hamstring strain on his very first pitch of spring training, and upon his return he seemingly veered between good and bad starts every time he took the mound.

Things reached a nadir on June 4 when he allowed seven runs over 1.2 innings against the Angels, but since then Giolito has finally righted the ship.

“I think the mechanical adjustment we made was important getting my slot to the right place, where it felt like I was throwing the ball naturally, throwing from my natural slot,” Giolito said. “Knowing I’d kind of crept down after the surgery so getting that back on track was a big turning point for sure.”

Sitting with a 6.42 ERA following the Angels start, Giolito has since lowered his season number to 3.36 while posting a 6-1 record on the year.

“It definitely feels good, it feels better than when you’re struggling and it’s like ‘eh it doesn’t feel right.’ You’re trying to work with what you have versus ‘cool I’m in a really good place, let’s keep staying there, develop a good routine within all the work to support being in that space of how your body is moving and everything like that,’” Giolito said. “Overall, very pleased we were able to identify that, make the change and keep working from there.”

While Garrett Crochet has been the unquestioned ace of the Red Sox staff, Giolito has given the team needed mid-rotation depth, helping solve what had previously been among the team’s fatal flaws. Prior to the start of the club’s recent upswing on June 7 Red Sox starters ranked 25th in MLB with a 4.53 ERA. Since then they ranked second entering Sunday with a 3.19 mark.

Giolito will be first man up when the Red Sox resume their season Friday at Wrigley Field in Chicago, and with the club finally playing like the contender it expected to be all along, the veteran right-hander said he hopes to keep doing his part to keep things rolling.

“We’re having a lot more fun now,” Giolito said. “We’ve just got to stay on it though. We’ve been winning recently but we have to keep this kind of energy throughout the second half as well.”

Cora: ‘There’s too many All-Stars’

Before Sunday’s game Alex Cora was asked about his memory of the 1999 All-Star Game at Fenway Park, which was played exactly 26 years prior. The Red Sox manager pointed to seeing Ted Williams greeted on the field by all of the game’s best players before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch, which he called a special moment in the sport’s history.

Without prompting, Cora then offered a lament regarding the state of the All-Star Game today.

“It should be like that every time, I think the All-Star Game is a special one. I understand and we’re living through it with our ace, he went nine yesterday and he’s not going to pitch in the All-Star Game, but I think we’ve got to do a better job to get the best of the best out there,” Cora said, referring to Garrett Crochet. “I don’t know if moving it back to Wednesday or making it a whole week event or something, but there’s too many All-Stars.”

Since its inception the All-Star Game has aimed to showcase the sport’s best on the same field at once, but whether because of injuries or other factors, many players selected in a given year don’t participate. That results in numerous replacement players being added to the roster, and this year the total number of All-Stars has reached 81, including 17 who have opted out.

One particularly controversial replacement was made over the weekend, when Milwaukee rookie Jacob Misiorowski was selected as an All-Star despite having only five MLB appearances and 25.2 innings to his name.

Two of the Red Sox’s three All-Star selections have elected not to participate as well. Alex Bregman won’t play because he was just activated from the injured list, and Crochet opted out of the game in order to rest up after pitching 129.1 innings in the first half.

Veteran closer Aroldis Chapman is expected to be the lone Red Sox player to take part in Tuesday’s game, which will be played at Truist Park in Atlanta starting at 8 p.m.