CLEVELAND – “How will they see Gavin Williams?”
Among all the big questions leading up to ALDS Game 5, this collective curiosity about the pitcher was the prison guard at the front.
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A little more than 44 hours before Williams took the mound for the game-winner in Cleveland, Chicago was shutout from Game 4. The Guardians were hoping for elimination that star closer Cade Smith could collect the last six outs, even with a five-run lead. But after the eighth round, Smith faltered in the ninth, which installed Williams in the first relief game of his professional career.
Williams needs only 18 points to win the side and extend Cleveland’s season. But this unexpected request from the expected Game 5 starter felt like a big risk to the season, even a factor in Thursday being the day between Williams’ bullpen schedules. There was still confidence that Williams would be able to show up and look like his usual dynamic self, but the hesitation lingered until the 27-year-old right-hander threw on the mound shortly after 8 pm ET on Saturday.
By the time Williams walked to the mound in the sixth inning, everyone who wondered what he had in store had an answer.
In Game 5, Williams claimed a winning streak for Cleveland: a dominant start followed by a trio of outstanding heroics, plus one big haul from the best player, José Ramírez. It’s a formula that has carried the Rangers to great heights this season, and this latest rendition is a 2-0 victory over the White Sox that sent Cleveland to the ALCS against the Tampa Bay Rays.
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The win also completed an unlikely comeback, making the Rangers the first team since the 2017 Yankees to pick up a best-of-five series from 2-0 down (which happened against Cleveland).
For his second straight start, Williams had the press box rushing the Field Program to determine where his exit ranks in Cleveland October lore. In Game 2, Williams became just the third pitcher in franchise history to strike out 11 in the playoffs, joining Bartholomew Colon in 1996 and Charles Nagy in 1996. In Game 5, Williams struck out one, tying Nagy’s record with twelve strikeouts over 5 ⅔ innings.
“You never know how someone will respond to the workload,” manager Stephen Vogt said amid a raucous postgame celebration. “And it just got 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 runner, but that plate also packed three punches, as Munetaka Murakami and Chase Meidroth threw in strikeouts and Andrew Benintendi wriggled through a 100.7-mph four over the zone. Williams added a two-hitter in the third to make dirty pitchers Brenton Doyle and Colson Montgomery look silly. Facing the heart of Chicago’s order in the fourth, Williams found Kyle Teel on a curveball and Miguel Vargas looking for a sinker. Then he launched a single 100-mph fastball past Murakami to score the frame.
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The sellout crowd of 36,889 — including the new minority-owner guard and world famous Clevelander Travis Kelce — went ballistic.
“He had everything tonight,” second baseman Travis Bazzana said afterward. “I didn’t have to worry about fielding. It was just, ‘cute 3, strike 3, strike 3.'”
“I’ve seen this at literally every level,” said Tanner Bibee, who has been teammates with Williams in multiple minor league stops as the two moved up to the big leagues after being drafted in 2021. “When he’s healthy and completely ready to go, he dominates the whole thing.”
Early in Game 5, there was only one problem: White Sox starter Sean Burgess was in the dugout, too. His material was not as insensitive as Williams, but the results were similar. Burgo batted through three innings of just 34 pitches.
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But in the bottom of the fourth, with increased brilliance from Williams, Cleveland broke through the top of the order on Burke. After Steven Kwan led off with a single, Ramírez brought home a two-run home run that can only be described as aesthetically absurd. In a 2-2 count, Burgess attacked a sharp curveball and executed it below the strike zone. But Ramirez looked for a world-class at-bat opportunity when he managed to pull a grounder near the dirt and put it just over the right-field fence to put Cleveland on the board.
When Williams pitched, the two-run lead was equal to 20. Two more hitters in the fifth brought his total to 11. Including relief in Game 4, this was the seventh time Williams had faced the White Sox this season, but the Chicago runners told a different story.
“[Catcher Patrick Bailey] He did a good job,” Williams said postgame about the game plan of fighting familiarity. “He was reading the whole time. We were talking between innings – the phenomenon back there. I think he supports her more than me.
“I’m going to call Gavin an easy game,” Bailey said, playing with complete confidence. “It’s not a bad call on the pitch. We’re just trying to mix it up, trying to keep guys in and out of the offseason. And he did an incredible job.”
At last the trouble came to the Sixth. Williams hit Montgomery’s lead man with the infamous hook. And after Doyle, the No. 9 hitter, with a 98-mph four-seamer for 12 strikeouts, Kyle Teel lifted a single into right field for Chicago in the first game of the game. A dangerous walk by Vargas loaded the bases and ended Williams’ night.
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But Cleveland’s weapons were not worn out in the ordeal. Lefty Eric Sabrowski came in and struck out Murakami with 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.
Comment preview? Nineteen scored by the same Tutors against the same White Sox three days ago in the Game. It’s the most K’s in any nine-inning game in major-league history, surpassing the long-standing record of twenty-five seasons achieved (most recently by the Brewers against the White Sox earlier this season).
In total, the White Sox have struck out a whopping 75 times in this series, breaking the previous division record set, interestingly enough, by the 2017 Yankees (64). Williams is credited with 24 on his own, the second-most by a pitcher in his best five-postseason streak behind only Gerrit Cole in the 2019 ALDS (25).
These faltering offensive totals and a lack of pitching depth that reared its ugly head in Games 3 and 4 in this series combined to destroy Chicago. In the end, the ALDS reflected what happened between these two teams in the regular season. When the White Sox dropped the division to the Rangers in September, they couldn’t take a 2-0 series lead over their Midwest rivals in October.
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Of course, the fact that Chicago is also playing on October 11th is a huge organizational victory, considering the franchise’s recent history, but spilling the series in this way undoubtedly still has its sting.
As for the Guardians, the show follows. It’s a quick turnaround on the boat before the ALCS begins on Monday at Tropicana Field. A tougher task remains for the Rays, who present an entirely different kind of challenge than the whiff-happy White Sox. Don’t expect Cleveland to record any strikeouts in the next round.
But every time Williams takes the mound again, the guards feel pretty good.