Gavin Williams Ties Cleveland's Playoff Strikeout Record as Guardians Win Game 5 on One Day of Rest

The last pitcher Cleveland used to save its season on Thursday is the first pitcher it will use to save it again on Saturday. Gavin Williams, the Guardians’ ace and Game 2 starter, closed the 9-5 win in Chicago that forced a deciding Game 5, and manager Stephen Vogt confirmed on Friday that Williams starts the winner-take-all game back in Cleveland, the Associated Press reports.

How did a Game 2 starter end up closing Game 4?

By elimination, in both senses. Cleveland needed eight pitchers to get through Thursday’s game, and when All-Star closer Cade Smith faltered in his second inning of work in the ninth, giving up a home run and a walk, Vogt turned to the best arm he had left, the Associated Press reports. Williams had never pitched in relief in the major leagues. He needed 18 pitches to get the final three outs, allowing one hit and striking out one, and the series was level.

The cameo was not as reckless as it looks on a pitching log. Thursday fell on the day Williams was scheduled to throw a bullpen session between starts, and Vogt said the club hoped the outing would serve as a higher-intensity version of that session, ESPN reports. Williams sought the manager out after the game to say he was ready for Saturday, and said on Friday that his body felt good and the morning had been a normal one, the Associated Press reports. Vogt’s own summary was shorter: Gavin wants the ball.

Why is the double duty such a gamble?

Because exposure compounds. Saturday will be Williams’ seventh appearance against Chicago this season, the Associated Press reports, and the White Sox lineup has now seen his full repertoire across a 98-pitch start on Monday and a ninth inning on Thursday. His Game 2 line explains why Cleveland accepts the risk anyway: 11 strikeouts in five-plus innings, the first five-straight-strikeouts sequence by a pitcher in franchise postseason history, and 16 pitches at 100 mph or more, the Associated Press reports.

There is a structural reason the Guardians are improvising. October keeps forcing these choices across the bracket, from Mason Miller missing an elimination game on paternity leave while his replacement vowed to start his own to the final-strike walk-off that beat Miller himself earlier in the round. Cleveland’s version is tax on the bullpen: Smith had already pitched in Games 3 and 4 and struggled across four innings of work in those two outings, prompting questions ESPN reports Vogt brushed aside on Friday. A bullpen game needs relievers who are fresh; Cleveland’s Game 4 needed eight of them, which is how the rotation’s ace became the ninth-inning answer.

Who does Williams face, and what is different about Chicago’s plan?

Sean Burke, in the first conventional start of Chicago’s entire postseason. The White Sox have opened with a reliever in all six of their playoff games so far, and Burke, who threw five and a third strong innings behind an opener in Game 2, was deliberately held out of Game 4 once Chicago failed to tie it, in case this game arrived, ESPN reports. Manager Will Venable said the club had weighed the lineup-exposure questions before deciding Burke would simply take the ball from the start on Saturday.

The contrast is the story of the night in one line: Chicago protected its Game 5 starter so carefully he never warmed up on Thursday, while Cleveland’s Game 5 starter recorded the last three outs. Both clubs arrived here the long way, Chicago having stunned Cleveland in Game 1 of this series after winning the division race by a single game in reverse, and the road team has won all four games, the Associated Press reports, which either makes home field meaningless or makes Saturday the night the pattern breaks.

What happened in Game 5? (Update, October 10)

The gamble produced the best start of Williams’ career. Pitching on one day of rest after his Thursday cameo, he held Chicago to one hit over 5 2/3 scoreless innings, struck out 12 and walked two on 94 pitches, the Akron Beacon Journal reports. The 12 strikeouts tied the franchise single-game playoff record Charles Nagy set in 1996, and Williams left to a standing ovation in the sixth with the bases loaded, before Erik Sabrowski struck out Munetaka Murakami to close the inning, Sports Illustrated reports.

Jose Ramirez supplied the only runs, a two-run home run in the fourth off Burke on a pitch just 0.74 feet off the ground, the lowest postseason home run pitch on record, and Cleveland’s bullpen added nine more strikeouts to finish with 21, a nine-inning postseason record, WHBC reports. The 2-0 win completed a comeback from two games down, at home, after losing the first two games of the series in the same building: Cleveland is the fourth team to win a best-of-five series after dropping the first two at home, WHBC reports. The road-team pattern that ran through the first four games finally broke in the game that decided the series.

Why does the one day of rest make this start historic?

Because the calendar, not the lineup, was the opponent. Williams is the first pitcher to strike out 10 or more in a playoff game on one day of rest since Livan Hernandez in the 1997 NLCS, theScore reports, and his 12 strikeouts are the second most in a winner-take-all game, behind only the 13 Tarik Skubal recorded in Game 5 of the 2025 ALDS. Across the series he struck out 23 in two starts, one of only seven pitchers to reach that mark in a single postseason series, Sports Illustrated reports.

The workload question Cleveland accepted on Friday now has its answer, and it is the flattering one. The 18 pitches on Thursday really did function as a bullpen session, and the exposure problem never materialised: Chicago’s lineup, seeing Williams for the seventh time this season, managed one hit against him when the season was on the line.

What happens next for Cleveland and Williams?

Tampa Bay, starting Monday. Game 1 of the ALCS is at Tropicana Field on Monday, October 12 at 8 p.m. Eastern, with Game 2 on Tuesday before the series moves to Cleveland on Thursday, Sports Illustrated reports. Williams will need real rest this time, which pushes his first ALCS start toward the middle of the series and leaves Cleveland to cover the opening games in Tampa Bay with the rest of a staff that just struck out 21 men in nine innings.

The format question travels with them, too: a best-of-seven against the Rays is the stage MLB’s proposal to let top seeds pick their playoff opponents is designed around, and Cleveland arrives as the team nobody picked after Game 2. Chicago’s winter starts with the opposite ledger: a 2-0 series lead, three straight elimination losses, and a Game 5 in which its hitters struck out more times in nine innings than any lineup in postseason history.

The workload question returned in the next round, with the opposite answer. Williams won ALCS Game 3 against Tampa Bay, and when Cleveland fell behind 3-2 with its season on the line, Vogt ruled Williams out of the Game 6 bullpen game on short rest, saving the ace who had thrived on one day of rest against Chicago for a Game 7 his team first had to reach.