Williams steps into stopper role with scoreless start

PHOENIX -- The last time the Guardians arrived in Arizona as a full squad back in February, expectations were sky-high. There have been countless drills on back fields, Spring Training contests and 124 big league games since, but what they set out for in February in Goodyear remains attainable in mid-August in Phoenix -- reach the postseason for the second consecutive season and third time in the past four years.

On Monday night, the Guardians took their latest step in achieving that. Right-handed pitcher Gavin Williams led the way in a 3-1 victory over the D-backs at Chase Field.

Cleveland gained a game in the American League Wild Card race over the Red Sox and Mariners and half a game on the idle Yankees. They now sit three games out of a playoff spot with 38 contests to go.

The funny thing about momentum, as they say, is that it’s only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher. So despite sustaining a sweep at home to the sub-.500 Braves over the weekend, the Guardians packed up their bags and knew one thing was for certain: Williams was getting the ball Monday night.

Manager Stephen Vogt was asked pregame if he viewed Williams as a quintessential stopper. While he deferred praise onto the rotation as a whole, there's no question the 26-year-old certainly pitched like one when Cleveland needed him most.

“I think that’s all of the pitchers, we all want to be that,” Williams said of being the de facto stopper.

Williams delivered 5 1/3 scoreless frames, scattering four singles. Despite an elevated pitch count, he turned in his fifth scoreless outing of 2025.

“Gavin was outstanding from the get-go,” Vogt said. “The command with the curveball -- the cutter was moving a lot tonight, too. He did a nice job mixing everything in.”

Arizona boasts a left-handed-heavy offense, a fact that played right into Williams’ favor. He hasn’t just been good against left-handed hitters in 2025 -- he’s been historically good.

We’re talking best-on-record good. Lefties have just a .142 batting average against Williams this year (34-for-239). The last two right-handed pitchers to hold left-handed batters to an average nearly as low were Zac Gallen (2022, .146) and Pedro Martinez (2000, .150), the latter of whom is generally considered to have authored one of the greatest individual seasons of the modern era. And Williams is still eight points below that.

A huge part of that success Monday was his curveball, as it has been all season. Batters have been virtually helpless in squaring it up, and it particularly flummoxed the D-backs. They mustered just one hit off the 27 times they saw it, and Williams recorded three of his strikeouts on his breaker. The pitch gives those left-handed hitters something else to decipher behind his already devastating four-seam/cutter combo.

“It’s the equalizer,” Vogt said of Williams’ curve.

Added Williams: “Being able to flip that in there for a chase or just flip it in there for a strike, it helps out a lot. It opens up everything and helps out with a mix of pitches.”

Williams has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since returning from the All-Star break. He has made six starts, and the opposition has managed to hit just .178. But maybe most important, he has avoided walks -- the final impetus in his emergence as a full-fledged ace.

He entered the night with a 12.4% walk rate, which ranked him in the bottom 5 percentile among all hurlers. But since returning from the break, he has lowered his walk frequency to a more manageable 8.3%.

Williams’ two most recent outings before Monday had been a tale of two ends of the seesaw. The excellent was nearly part of Guardians lore for decades to come, falling two outs shy of completing a no-hitter. The poor resulted in him finishing just three innings in his last start.

But part of what makes the game’s top arms elite is their ability to not let one rough outing roll into two. Home runs from C.J. Kayfus and Brayan Rocchio staked Cleveland to a lead it did not relinquish, giving Williams enough breathing room to stay on the attack.

“The way Gavin has thrown over the last few months, he has definitely taken the reins as far as leading this pitching staff,” Vogt said. “The way he’s been throwing, we have a lot of confidence whenever Gavin takes the mound.

“When he's been executing, he's one of the best.”