GOODYEAR, Arizona, Feb. 27, 2025 — If you’ve read any of my content this offseason, then you know I’m a big believer in Guardians right-hander Gavin Williams emerging as one of the best value picks in fantasy baseball drafts in 2025.
In my article on post-hype sleepers, I mentioned that I believed Williams was a breakout candidate because of the cutter he introduced in 2024 that gave him a swing-and-miss pitch to both righties and lefties that he could also pound the zone with. It was a pitch that caused Nick Pollack of Pitcher List to comp Williams to Garrett Crochet in regards to the fact that both pitchers could potentially thrive with a four-seam/cutter-heavy approach.
However, in that same article I mentioned that some of my concerns with Williams were that his slider, which graded out so well while he was a prospect carving up minor league hitters, had yet to translate to big-league innings and that his fastball, which had the metrics to be an elite pitch, was getting hit much harder by right-handed hitters than it should have been.
Turns out, unsurprisingly, that Williams and the Guardians knew both of those things were issues as well, and they both were linked back to mechanical issues that potentially stemmed from Williams picking up bad habits as he compensated for an elbow injury early in the spring last year. Months of going to physical therapy three times a week has Williams’ elbow “feeling great,” so the young pitcher has now been able to turn his attention back to some of the mechanical issues that popped up last year.
“He’s just working on his delivery to get his fastball profiles back,” said Guardians manager Stephen Vogt. “Last year with the elbow injury, he just wasn’t able to get back to his normal self, so he really dove into some delivery mechanics to get his fastball profile specifically back to where it should be. It was really flat last year, and it’s been showing well so far.”
What Vogt is referring to when he talks about Williams’ four-seam being flatter is that the pitch had almost an inch less induced vertical break (iVB) in 2024. Induced vertical break is a measurement that removes gravity from the equation and tells us how much a pitch moves up or down from a point of zero as it approaches home plate. Four-seam fastballs always have a positive iVB number, with 17 inches being seen as an above-average iVB.
All four-seamers also move horizontally to the pitcher’s arm side as well. When you combine that horizontal movement with the iVB, you see a sense of a pitch’s “total break.” Generally speaking, a four-seam fastball with nine or more inches of horizontal break is considered to have lots of “run” or some people would say “heavy bore,” just meaning it bores in on a hitter’s hands.
In 2024, Williams gained two inches of horizontal movement, or run, on his four-seam fastball and lost iVB, which was not something he wanted to do. In the offseason, the 25-year-old realized that it all stemmed from a mechanical change he needed to make.
“Just staying taller on my back leg,” Williams mentioned. “Last year, I was too deep in the back leg, which makes me spin out of it on my back foot, creating a kind of dead zone, sinker, which wasn’t good for me. Velocity with that kind of movement doesn’t work really in the big leagues. I was just trying to get back to that last year, but I never could figure it out.”
If his first start in spring training was any indication, Williams was able to figure it out this offseason.
His four-seam fastball had almost two inches more iVB, which put him up to an elite 17″ and also had over an inch more horizontal movement. Along with his above-average extension, that creates the plus fastball that we saw from him in the minor leagues, and he was able to get a couple of whiffs on the pitch in his two innings of work. (image below courtesy of Kyle Bland and Pitcher List).
In addition to the new movement profile on his four-seamer, Williams averaged 97 mph, topping out at 98 mph, and struck out three batters in his two scoreless innings. “Gavin looked really sharp,” said Vogt after the game. “Velocity, obviously, is there, but the movement looked like what he used to look like. It had some good vertical movement to it.”
That added vertical movement, plus the mechanical adjustments Williams made in the offseason, should allow him to attack the top half of the strike zone with his fastball more than he was able to last year. “This year is gonna help me out, being more at the top of the zone, where I want to be and where I should be,” said Williams.
His four-seam fastball still had above-average swinging strikes rates last year, but there was a noticeable dip in its performance against right-handed hitters. In 2023, Williams posted a 12.6% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) on the fastball to righties and had a 21.5% PutAway Rate, which measures how often a two-strike pitch results in a strikeout. The MLB average for starting pitchers on a four-seamer was 16.8%, so Williams was far better than average. In 2024, his overall SwStr% on the four-seamer to righties dipped to 10.4%, and his PutAway Rate fell to 14%, which was the 30th percentile among starters. That’s a monumental shift from what he had done in 2023, and getting the movement and location back on his four-seam fastball should pay immediate dividends in Williams’ strikeout upside.
However, the mechanical tweaks Williams detailed also helped him refine his slider a little bit. Last year, he struggled to find the grip and release on his slider and almost seemed to be throwing a cutter at times. In fact, many of the pitch classification sites list Williams as introducing a cutter last year, but the pitcher himself said, “I was throwing a slider last year, but it wasn’t a slider. It’s more of a cutter than a slider.”
That “cutter” was a harder version of Williams’ 88.6 mph slider, which had slightly more drop but less horizontal movement across the zone. Even though the pitch kind of came about as an accident, it was incredibly successful for him. It posted a 17.1% SwStr% and 36% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR), both of which are well above the league average. It was also a pitch that he was able to throw successfully to hitters of both handedness. He commanded it really well in the zone against lefties, posting a nearly 20% called strike rate (league average is 15%), while also having a 17% SwStr%. Against righties, the pitch was in the zone less but got plenty of chases outside of the zone with a nearly 30% PutAway Rate to righties, well above the league average of 17.5%.
Even though Williams wasn’t intending to find himself a new pitch, he may have stumbled onto something that takes his game to another level, and he intends to keep it. He just might not throw it much this spring. “The harder cutter will definitely come back into play. I don’t think probably out here in spring training, just because it won’t move the way I want to, especially the way the air is out here, but we’ll see how it goes.”
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One thing we have seen in spring training is that Williams has worked to regain the feel for the slider that he lost last season. In his first outing this spring, he dialed back the velocity of the pitch, as you can see in the chart above, but it had a drastically different movement profile with over seven more inches of drop and six more inches of bite.
“I mean, you know, that was his pitch,” added Vogt. “He didn’t quite have it all last year, and so it’s really good to see the shape back on it today.”
Part of the shape that Williams has been able to get back on his slider is due to a grip change the starter made in the offseason. “I wanted something a little bit bigger,” Williams said. “Having something a little bit bigger and kind of like the same speed [as the cutter] really is going to help out. Yeah, something going right to left is going to be big for me.”
“In bullpens, it’s very, very big. I learned yesterday it’s tightened up in games, so I can use it in both righties and lefties. I used it to both yesterday. Did it on the strikeout pitch to lefty, back foot. Did it for a swing and miss to a righty, so I can do it both ways.”
Considering the cutter is also a pitch that Williams can use successfully against all hitters, the 25-year-old will now come into 2025 with four pitches (four-seam, cutter, slider, curve) that he can use to both righties and lefties, and a changeup that he will mix in to lefties. The cutter will give him two fastball variations that he can throw for strikes, and he’ll also have multiple secondaries that can get swings and misses. All of that, with revamped mechanics to help with his locations, are clear indications that a breakout is coming.
However, in addition to refining his pitch mix, Williams also spent time over the offseason working on his mental approach on the mound. Vogt had mentioned wanting Williams to go and attack the strike zone and go right after hitters. That was something that both men thought Williams did in his first start, and is something Williams spent the last few months working on. “I learned to slow the game down over the offseason. Working on breathing stuff, just being able to slow the game down. Last year, I just got way too ahead of myself, being frustrated with myself and just holding that in. One thing led to another. Now I’m just not really thinking about the negatives and just worrying about more the positives.”
That positive outlook has led Williams to a place where he feels like he’s “in a good spot right now… My confidence is high.” So is mine that this is going to be the year we see Williams take a big step forward, and he’s currently a major value pick in fantasy baseball drafts at his NFBC 12-team price of pick 233 in 33 drafts since February 1.
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