Guardians waste brilliant outing from Gavin Williams, drop series finale to Twins

CLEVELAND — It felt like the Guardians lost twice Thursday afternoon at Progressive Field. First, they wasted a brilliant outing from right-hander Gavin Williams when Hunter Gaddis allowed the game-tying run in the eighth inning. Then, the Twins scored two runs off Erik Sabrowski in the 12th to beat them 3-1 and prevent Cleveland from clinching the four-game series after it took the first two. The Guardians managed only three hits on the day, going 0-for-17 with runners in scoring position. They went hitless in extra innings to cap another weak offensive display, even with Jose Ramirez back in the lineup for the second straight day. "Extra innings was really tough for us," manager Stephen Vogt said. "We had two opportunities to get the winning run to third base with nobody out and just weren't able to do it. "It was a frustrating day, offensively. (Twins starting pitcher) Taj Bradley was outstanding. This was a well-pitched game on both sides. Gavin was unbelievable. That's about as good as we've seen from him. I wish he had 20 more pitches (left in him), but that's the way it goes." Williams threw 97 pitches in one of the best outings of his career, tossing seven scoreless innings and allowing only two hits while striking out 11. It was Williams' third straight 11-strikeout performance, and he became the first in franchise history to strike out 11 or more without a walk in back-to-back starts. Byron Buxton (single two batters into the game) and Kody Clemens (leadoff single in the fifth) recorded the only hits off Williams, who retired 11 straight after Buxton's base hit — and the final nine hitters he faced. "I felt like early on I had my good stuff," Williams said. "Just looking up, seeing the metrics, just seeing everything that I've been working on the past few weeks starting to show up. So, I felt like it was pretty early that I knew." Williams had seven strikeouts through the first four innings, including an immaculate inning (three strikeouts on nine pitches) in the fourth. "It was a pretty special moment," Vogt said. "It doesn't happen often and very rarely do you get close. As the tension's mounting, you get Strike 7, Strike 8, and then Strike 9 was pretty cool." Catcher Patrick Bailey had to tell Williams he accomplished the feat. "I actually did not know that," Williams said. "I feel like with the Buxton at-bat, I thought he fouled off a couple more pitches than I thought, because I was definitely not throwing the pitches where I wanted to with him. But, yeah, it was pretty cool. "I would say after the way I was throwing the ball last year, all the walks and stuff, that probably would've never happened. It's definitely the first time I've ever thrown one." Williams said it was emblematic of the progress he has made this year. "I think this year I've taken a step forward, throwing a lot more strikes, obviously," he said. "And I'm going to keep trying to do that, pushing forward. But there's a lot of things paying off. "There's definitely a confidence component of that and just knowing that I got good stuff and can get anybody out at any point helps out, too." Bailey, Williams' personal catcher, has noticed. "The mechanics look awesome and it just cleans up the four-seam (fastball) quality better. The sweeper's tighter, the curveballs," he said. "Those three combination pitches are some of the best, probably the best, stuff in the game." Gaddis allowed the game-tying run after walking two of the three batters he faced, including the leadoff hitter, as a single from pinch hitter Alan Roden off Cade Smith scored Minnesota's first run in the eighth. Bailey took Bradley deep with one out in the fifth for the game's first run — a blast an estimated 420 feet into the right-field seats. Since the start of July, Bailey is batting .325 (13-for-40) with three homers, seven RBIs and a .972 OPS over 12 games. "Just working really hard, doing some swing things here and there, and it's nice to get some results from kind of the work we're putting in, but still got a long way to go," he said. Contact Chris Assenheimer at (440) 329-7136 or cassenheimer@chroniclet.com. Like him on Facebook and follow him @CAwesomeheimer on X.