CLEVELAND — “What will Gavin Williams look like?”
Of all the important questions leading up to Game 5 of the ALDS, this collective curiosity regarding the Guardians’ starting pitcher was at the forefront.
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A little more than 44 hours before Williams took the mound for the winner-take-all contest in Cleveland, he was in Chicago to close out Game 4. Facing elimination, the Guardians hoped that the closest star, Cade Smith, could collect the final six outs, even with a five-run lead. But after a flawless eighth, Smith faltered in the ninth, which brought Williams into the game for the first relief appearance of his professional career.
Williams needed just 18 pitches to put the team away and extend Cleveland’s season. But this unexpected request from the expected Game 5 starter seemed like a considerable risk at the time, even taking into account that Thursday was Williams’ scheduled bullpen day between starts. There was always confidence that Williams could show up and look like his usual dynamic self, but the uncertainty persisted until the 27-year-old right-hander bounced over the hump shortly after 8 p.m. ET on Saturday.
By the time Williams left the mound in the sixth inning, anyone wondering what he would have in store had their answer.
In Game 5, Williams showcased a vintage winning recipe for Cleveland: a dominant pitching performance followed by a trio of high-leverage heroes, plus a big swing from their best player, José Ramírez. It’s a formula that took the Guardians to great heights during this era, and this latest rendition produced a 2-0 victory over the White Sox that sent Cleveland to the ALCS against the Tampa Bay Rays.
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The victory also completed an improbable comeback, making the Guardians the first team since the 2017 Yankees to bounce back from a 2-0 loss in a best-of-five series (which occurred against Cleveland).
For the second straight start, Williams asked the press box at Progressive Field to determine where his outing ranked in Cleveland’s October story. In Game 2, Williams became only the third pitcher in franchise history to strike out 11 in a postseason start, joining Bartolo Colon in 1999 and Charles Nagy in 1996. In Game 5, Williams outdid himself, tying Nagy’s record with a dozen strikeouts in 5 ⅔ innings.
“You don’t know how someone is going to react to the workload,” manager Stephen Vogt said amid the raucous postgame celebration. “And he just kept getting better and better.”
For five innings, Williams held the White Sox hitless. Tristan Peters drew a walk in the second to give Chicago its first baserunner, but that frame also featured three punchouts, as Munetaka Murakami and Chase Meidroth battled against sweepers and Andrew Benintendi rocked through a 100.7 mph four-seamer over the zone. Williams added two more strikeouts in the third as his wicked knuckle curve made Brenton Doyle and Colson Montgomery look ridiculous. Facing the heart of Chicago’s order in the fourth, Williams caught Kyle Teel looking at the curveball and Miguel Vargas looking at a sinker. Then he threw a 100 mph fastball past Murakami to punctuate the frame.
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The sellout crowd of 36,889 — including new Guardians minority owner and famed Clevelander Travis Kelce — went crazy.
“He had everything he needed tonight,” second baseman Travis Bazzana said afterward. “I didn’t have to worry about the lineup. It was just ‘hit 3, hit 3, hit 3’.”
“I’ve seen him literally at every level,” said Tanner Bibee, who was teammates with Williams several times in the minor leagues as the two climbed into the big leagues after being drafted in 2021. “When he’s healthy and ready to go, all he does is dominate.”
Going into Game 5, there was only one problem: White Sox starter Sean Burke was also in trouble. His work wasn’t as hot as Williams’, but the results were similar. Burke threw three perfect innings on just 34 pitches.
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But late in the fourth, energized by Williams’ growing brilliance, Cleveland’s top order broke through against Burke. After Steven Kwan led off with a single, Ramírez brought the house down with a two-run home run that can only be described as aesthetically absurd. In a 2-2 count, Burke attacked with a sharp curve and executed it below the strike zone. But Ramirez’s uncanny ability to hit the ball won out, as he managed to pull the breaker practically out of the dirt and lift it just over the right-field fence to put Cleveland on the board.
Given the way Williams was pitching, the two-run lead might as well have been 20. Two more strikeouts in a walk-off fifth brought his total to 11. Including his relief outing in Game 4, it was Williams’ seventh time facing the White Sox this season, but Chicago’s swings told a different story.
“(Receiver Patrick Bailey) did a good job,” Williams said after the game of the game plan to combat familiarity. “He read swings all the time. We talked between innings – he’s phenomenal there. I think it’s more of a prop to him than it is to me.”
“Gavin is an easy match to call,” Bailey said, downplaying credit. “There’s not really a bad pitch to follow. We’re just trying to mix things up, trying to keep guys in between and keep them off balance. And he did an incredible job of execution.”
The problems finally arrived in sixth grade. Williams hit leadoff Montgomery with a wayward sweeper. And after hitting Doyle, the No. 9 hitter, with a 98 mph four-run for his 12th strikeout, Kyle Teel delivered a single to right field for Chicago’s first hit of the game. A walk to the dangerous Vargas loaded the bases and ended Williams’ night.
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But Cleveland’s arms weren’t done accumulating puffs of air. Left-hander Erik Sabrowski came in and struck out Murakami to strand the bases loaded. Over the final three innings, right-handers Hunter Gaddis and Cade Smith combined to retire eight more White Sox batters. This brought the Game 5 punchout total to 21, a playoff record for a nine-inning game.
The previous disc? Nineteen, set by these same Guardians against these same White Sox three days ago in Game 3. And the 21st isn’t just a new benchmark for October; that’s the most Ks in a nine-inning game in major league history, surpassing the long-standing record of 20 achieved 10 times (most recently by the Brewers against the White Sox earlier this season).
In total, the White Sox have struck out 75 times in this Series, breaking the previous Division Series record held, interestingly enough, by the 2017 Yankees (64). Williams accounted for 24 alone, the second most by a pitcher in a best-of-five playoff series behind only Gerrit Cole in the 2019 ALDS (25).
Those staggering strikeout totals and the lack of pitching depth that reared its ugly head in Games 3 and 4 combined to be Chicago’s undoing in this series. Ultimately, the ALDS reflects what happened between these two teams in the regular season. Just as the White Sox let the division slip away to the Guardians in September, they couldn’t capitalize on a 2-0 lead over their Midwest rivals in October.
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Of course, the fact that Chicago even played on October 11 is a massive organizational victory, considering the franchise’s recent history, but wasting a series in this manner undoubtedly still stings.
As for the Guardians, the show continues. A quick turnaround is underway before the ALCS begins Monday at Tropicana Field. A tougher task awaits the Rays, who present a completely different kind of challenge than the White Sox. Cleveland shouldn’t expect to set any strikeout records in the next round.
But whenever Williams takes the mound again, the Guardians will feel pretty good.
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