The making of Gavin Williams, the Cleveland Guardians’ latest pitching development triumph

The scouting report on Seth Brown was simple.

“A guy who eats fastballs,” said Pete Loizzo, an analyst in the Guardians’ front office, about the A’s slugger, who owns a career .528 slugging percentage against heaters.

Gavin Williams tossed Brown a curveball. Then a changeup, and another changeup. He retired Brown on three pitches.

And there was Loizzo, sitting behind home plate, watching in awe the rookie he helped wrangle into the organization. Ben Johnson, the Guardians’ assistant director of pitching development, texted Loizzo to ask if he was occupying the team’s scouting seats for Williams’ much-anticipated debut last Wednesday.

“You bet your ass I am,” Loizzo replied. He had been waiting two years for that evening, for a top draft pick and top prospect to reach the top.

Williams’ ascent through the system was quick. His hype has been immense, as he ranks No. 13 on MLB Pipeline’s latest top prospect ranking.

If he realizes his potential, the Guardians could have their next ace: a 6-foot-6, soft-spoken, hard-throwing Carolina kid who possesses what rotation mate Tanner Bibee describes as “one of the more unreal fastballs I’ve ever seen.”

“If he’s attacking the zone,” Bibee said, “he’s really hard to beat.”

The first time Loizzo watched Williams pitch, a midweek game between East Carolina and Elon in late February 2019, he actually planned to devote more time to eyeing a handful of hitters on both sides. Williams already carried the reputation of a future early-round selection, and after he showcased his arsenal for five innings, Loizzo light-heartedly said to a Cleveland scouting intern: “This guy’s going to be OK. He’s got a shot.”

“The stuff was impressive as hell,” said Loizzo, who scouted the Carolinas, Virginia and eastern Tennessee at the time. “You’re immediately going to have him in somewhat of rarified air on your list just because of the stuff quality.”

Williams bullied college hitters with his fastball, and he threw a softer version of his north-to-south, looping curveball. Cleveland’s scouting contingent liked that a pitcher with his mammoth frame could maintain his fastball velocity deep into a start.

“I think he came out of the womb at six feet,” Loizzo quipped.

There were questions about Williams’ command, but the more he pitched, the better he performed. His final season at East Carolina, he took on a far greater workload than he ever had, but his strikeout rate soared, he chopped his walk rate in half and he rarely allowed a harmful hit.

The Guardians, who wound up drafting Williams with the 23rd pick in 2021, identified a few tweaks they thought could position him as one of the more intriguing pitching prospects in the sport.

First, they added a touch of horsepower to his curveball. Second, they encouraged him to throw more high fastballs; he has sufficient ride on the pitch, so if he threw it up in the zone, he could miss more bats. Third, there were some inefficiencies in his lower-half movement early in his delivery. They cleaned that up to help him unlock more consistent command.

Finally, the adjustment that created the most homework and required the most time and energy: They helped to reinvent Williams’ slider, equipping the pitch with more cut and more oomph.

“It wasn’t in a great place,” Loizzo said.

“It was terrible,” Williams clarified.

Loizzo has since shifted to an analyst role in which he works on pitch design, assesses the pitchers who pass through High-A Lake County and collaborates with other departments on player development plans. To pinpoint the optimal grip and approach for the slider, Loizzo partnered with Williams, pitching coordinator Caleb Longshore and analyst Will Huntington, whom Loizzo said “spent an associate’s degree worth of time working on what Gavin’s slider could be.”

“This year,” Williams said, “we finally figured out what works best. I think it’s right where it needs to be.”

Williams’ delivery is eerily reminiscent of Gerrit Cole’s motion, and the Guardians actually compared the two pitchers in terms of size when evaluating Williams’ frame during the draft process. They’re careful about placing such expectations on him, but the two undoubtedly share a resemblance. Bibee, a fellow 2021 draft pick who rose through the Guardians’ system alongside Williams, can’t help but notice the similarities.

“(Williams’ delivery) is super stock. Gerrit Cole’s is super stock, too,” Bibee said. “It’s quiet, quiet, quiet. And then he hits a point in his delivery and it’s just, BOOM, down the mound, and it’s just, like, ‘100 (mph).’ It’s electric.”

Williams’ repertoire is full of swing-and-miss options, but the slider completed the package. The Guardians pushed him to lean on his secondary pitches in the minors this season, to resist the temptation to settle for blowing one 98 mph fastball after another past overmatched hitters. He limited opponents to a .173 average and .297 slugging percentage while tallying 85 strikeouts in 60 innings.

“Everything plays off the fastball,” Williams said, “but I knew I needed more pitches just to be able to get guys off certain pitches.”

In spring training, Williams and Bibee routinely attracted observers to the back fields from every department in the Guardians front office and every coaching level in the system. The two consensus top-100 prospects created friendly competitions centered on goals such as who could throw the most first-pitch breaking balls for strikes.

That explains why it meant a little more to Loizzo as he watched Williams drop in a 78 mph curveball for a called strike to start that first battle with Brown last week.

“For him to execute that,” Loizzo said, “there are a lot of people who had a hand in him doing that, because I don’t know if he would have been able to do that coming out of college. Little, micro things end up meaning a lot because you know somebody sacrificed a lot of time. It’s cool to see the effort pay off.”

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(Photo of Gavin Williams during his major-league debut against the A’s: David Richard / USA Today)