The Cleveland Guardians have leaned on their rotation all season long, and when it came to making hitters miss, one arm stood above the rest. Gavin Williams wrapped up the regular season with 248 strikeouts, the most of any pitcher in the American League. That total left him nine strikeouts clear of Toronto’s Dylan Cease and New York’s Cam Schlittler, who finished tied for second in the AL with 239 apiece. For a pitcher whose raw stuff has always drawn attention, it was the kind of season that changes how the rest of the league views him.
“In terms of swing and miss, Williams had a monster season by leading the American League with 248 strikeouts. While fellow rotation mate Parker Messick stole the show in many ways, Williams put himself on the radar as one of the game’s premier strikeout artists,” MLB.com posted.
The rest of his numbers back that up. Williams went 14-8 with a 3.76 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP across 32 starts and 184 1/3 innings. Opposing hitters managed just a .213 batting average against him, and his strikeout total works out to better than twelve punchouts per nine innings. Only one pitcher in all of baseball finished the year with more strikeouts than the Cleveland righty.
What makes his season even more impressive is the company he kept in his own rotation. Parker Messick grabbed a lot of the headlines as a rookie All-Star, finishing with a 2.56 ERA and 193 strikeouts of his own, which ranked eighth in the American League. Having two starters among the top ten strikeout pitchers in the league is a big reason Cleveland was able to hang around the race long enough to chase down the White Sox.
Williams also deserves credit for how he finished. August was a rough month, as he posted a 5.56 ERA over five starts, including an outing at Anaheim on Aug. 25 in which he gave up five runs and could not make it out of the second inning. Plenty of pitchers would have let that stretch carry over into September. Williams did the opposite.
He opened the month by striking out thirteen Toronto hitters over seven innings on Sept. 1, allowing only an unearned run. Five days later, he fanned eleven Tigers in six innings. His best work might have come on Sept. 20, when he threw seven scoreless innings with nine strikeouts in a 1-0 win over the A’s at a time when every game mattered in the division race. Overall, Williams posted a 2.54 ERA in September with 44 strikeouts in 28 1/3 innings.
The Guardians open the American League Division Series on Saturday at Progressive Field. When a team needs a strikeout with runners on base in October, having the league leader in that category on the roster is a pretty good place to start.
NEXT: Guardians Drop Season Finale To Royals
