CLEVELAND — “How will Gavin Williams look?”
Of all the questions looming large leading up to ALDS Game 5, 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 closing out Game 4. Facing elimination, the Guardians were hoping that star closer Cade Smith could collect the final six outs, even with a five-run lead. But after a clean eighth, Smith faltered in the ninth, which ushered Williams into the game for the first relief appearance of his professional career.
Williams needed just 18 pitches to retire the side and extend Cleveland’s season. But this unexpected ask of the expected Game 5 starter felt like a considerable risk at the time, even factoring in that Thursday was Williams’ scheduled bullpen day between starts. There was still confidence that Williams could show up and look like his usual dynamic self, but the uncertainty lingered until the 27-year-old right-hander bounced out to the bump shortly after 8 p.m. ET on Saturday.
By the time Williams walked off the mound in the sixth inning, everyone who had been wondering what he’d have in store had their answer.
In Game 5, Williams headlined a vintage winning recipe for Cleveland: a dominant starting pitching performance followed by a trio of high-leverage heroes, plus one big swing from their best player, José Ramírez. It’s a formula that has carried 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 unlikely comeback, making the Guardians the first team since the 2017 Yankees to rally from down 2-0 in a best-of-five series (which happened against Cleveland).
For the second straight start, Williams had the Progressive Field press box scrambling to determine where his outing ranked in Cleveland October lore. In Game 2, Williams became just the third pitcher in franchise history to strike out 11 in a playoff start, joining Bartolo Colon in 1999 and Charles Nagy in 1996. In Game 5, Williams one-upped himself, tying Nagy’s record with a dozen strikeouts across 5 ⅔ innings.
“You don’t know how somebody’s going to respond to the workload,” manager Stephen Vogt said amid the raucous postgame celebration. “And he just kept getting better and 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 went down flailing at sweepers and Andrew Benintendi swung through a 100.7-mph four-seamer above the zone. Williams added two more strikeouts in the third as his nasty knuckle-curve made Brenton Doyle and Colson Montgomery look silly. Facing the heart of Chicago’s order in the fourth, Williams caught Kyle Teel looking at the curveball and Miguel Vargas staring at a sinker. Then he unleashed 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 world-famous Clevelander Travis Kelce — went ballistic.
“He had everything going tonight,” second baseman Travis Bazzana said afterward. “Didn’t have to worry about fielding. It was just, ‘strike 3, strike 3, strike 3.'”
“I’ve seen it at literally every single level,” said Tanner Bibee, who was teammates with Williams at multiple minor-league stops as the two climbed to the big leagues after being drafted in 2021. “When he’s healthy and fully ready to go, all he’s done is dominate.”
Early on in Game 5, there was only one problem: White Sox starter Sean Burke was in a groove, too. His stuff wasn’t as sizzling as Williams’, but the results were similar. Burke cruised through three perfect innings on just 34 pitches.
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But in the bottom of the fourth, energized by Williams’ increasing brilliance, Cleveland’s top of the 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 knuckle-curve and executed it below the strike zone. But Ramirez’s otherworldly bat-to-ball ability won out, as he managed to scoop the breaker practically off the dirt and lift it just over the right-field fence to put Cleveland on the board.
Given how Williams was throwing, the two-run lead might as well have been 20. Two more strikeouts in a flawless fifth brought his total to 11. Including his relief outing in Game 4, this was the seventh time Williams had faced the White Sox this season, but Chicago’s swings told a different story.
“[Catcher Patrick Bailey] did a good job,” Williams said postgame about the game plan to combat the familiarity. “He was reading swings the whole time. We were talking between innings — he’s phenomenal back there. I think it’s more props to him than me.”
“Gavin’s an easy game to call for,” Bailey said, downplaying the credit. “There’s not really a bad pitch to call. We’re just trying to mix it up, try to keep guys in-between and off-balance. And he did an unbelievable job executing.”
Trouble did finally arrive in the sixth. Williams hit leadoff man Montgomery with a wayward sweeper. And after he blitzed Doyle, the No. 9 hitter, with a 98-mph four-seamer for his 12th strikeout, Kyle Teel lofted a single into 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 were not finished racking up whiffs. Lefty Erik Sabrowski entered and struck out Murakami to strand the bases loaded. Over the final three innings, right-handers Hunter Gaddis and Cade Smith combined to strike out eight more White Sox hitters. That brought the Game 5 punchout total to 21, a postseason record for a nine-inning game.
The previous record? Nineteen, set by these same Guardians against these same White Sox three days ago in Game 3. And 21 isn’t just a new benchmark for October; it’s the most K’s in any nine-inning game in major-league history, surpassing the longstanding record of 20 achieved 10 times (most recently by the Brewers against the White Sox earlier this season).
In total, the White Sox struck out a whopping 75 times in this series, smashing the previous division series record held by, interestingly enough, those 2017 Yankees (64). Williams accounted for 24 on his own, the second-most by a pitcher in a best-of-five postseason series behind only Gerrit Cole in the 2019 ALDS (25).
These 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. In the end, the ALDS reflected 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 were unable to capitalize on a 2-0 series lead over their Midwest rivals in October.
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Of course, that Chicago was even playing on Oct. 11 is a massive organizational victory, considering the franchise’s recent history, but squandering a series in this fashion undoubtedly still stings.
As for the Guardians, the show goes on. A quick turnaround is on deck before the ALCS begins on Monday at Tropicana Field. A tougher task awaits in the Rays, who present a completely different genre of challenge than the whiff-happy White Sox. Cleveland shouldn’t expect to set any strikeout records in the next round.
But whenever Williams takes the mound again, the Guardians are going to feel pretty good.
