The Rangers Have Another Big League Starter in Gavin Williams

Among all 30 major league franchises, the Rangers have one of the richest recent histories of developing pitchers. Dating back in the days of CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee, Cleveland seems to be constantly churning out young pitching from a stockpile of talent acquired through the draft, international free agency, and the trade market. Heading into the 2023 season, the team’s rotation already features four former Guardians draft picks — Shane Bieber, Aron Civale, Zach Plesacand Triston McKenzie — and the onslaught shows no signs of stopping.

In April, the Rangers highlighted a pair of top 100 prospects in their starting rotation Logan Allen (No. 63 of The Board at the beginning of 2023) and Tanner Bibee (No. 74). In June, Gavin Williams (No. 76) made his big league debut. With Bieber, McKenzie, and Cal Quantrill missing injury time and Civale being traded to Tampa Bay at the deadline, a total of 47 starts have been made by this trio of 24-year-old rookies — plus 17 of less-touted prospects Places called Peyton Battenfield in the United States, Hunter Gaddisand Xavion Curry:

Now, August is not so kind to the Guardians. The club’s 2023 playoff chances have dropped from a recent high of 32.2% on July 30 to 8.1% today. They are 5-9 on the month, thanks in part to a pair of back-to-back walk-off losses against the Rays last week. And the breach looks like nine tumbleweeds blowing across a dusty desert. The team has only six home runs this month; Josh Bell, who they dealt to Miami at the deadline, had five home runs of his own in August. The Guardians didn’t trade very aggressively at the deadline, but the reality is that this next month and a half is going to be a big part of evaluating what they have in their clubhouse and what they need to add for the 2024.

The bad news is that their offense will need some serious strengthening. The good news is that with the addition of Allen, Bibee, and now Williams, the 2024 rotation will be one of the deepest in baseball. Allen, whose strange transformation scared Michael Baumann – no, not that Michael Baumann – earlier this summer, made 18 starts, posting a 3.33 ERA and 3.99 FIP in just under 100 innings. His Statcast percentile ranking has him near average in terms of his batted ball profile. He had his ups and downs in his debut season, but generally he looked like a nice league-average starter – not bad for a 24-year-old rookie left.

Bibee’s introduction to the big leagues (in his second pro season) was even better. Among 88 pitchers with at least 100 innings, he ranks seventh with a 2.90 ERA and 19th with a 3.62 FIP. His 4.35 xFIP raises some red flags about a heavy fly ball rate, but he’s been able to miss barrels enough to keep those fly balls in the park up to this point, and his ability to limit hard contact with an effective four-seamer/slider mix has yielded success thus far.

The 6-foot-6 Williams, who is scheduled to start tonight against the Tigers, is the latest of the three to reach the majors, which began June 21 at his second season of pro ball. After struggling a bit in two of his first three outings, he has yet to allow more than two earned runs in any of his six starts since the All-Star break, posting a 1.80 ERA and 2.73 FIP, and allowed just one home run in 30 innings. Five of the six outings have come against teams that currently hold a playoff spot, including his last two: a 12-strikeout performance in seven scoreless innings against Toronto on Aug. 7 and a 10-strikeout, a run outing last Saturday against the Rays in Trop. His biggest challenge is limiting walks, and he’s had serious trouble with that — his 9.9% walk rate puts him in the 28th percentile — but the Guardians can hope that his 24-to -1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his last two starts means he’s headed in the right direction there:

In the end, Williams was very similar to fellow right-hander Bibee in his first 10 starts. Like Bibee, he attacked hitters with a hard four-seamer – at 95.7 mph on average, Williams’ was half a tick faster than Bibee, and also ran five inches. He also leaned into it more – while Bibee threw his heater less than half the time, Williams’ 58.7% fastball rate was sixth-highest among starters who threw 750 pitches. Both righties have a slider as their primary secondary offering – Bibee more so than Williams – with a curveball and changeup rounding out their arsenals. Williams’ fastball is especially valued by the PitchingBot and Stuff+ pitching models – PitchingBot ranks it as the 11th best fastball among starters this season at 64, while Stuff+ ranks it 19th with a rating of 114:

As for the four-seamer – with Williams’ big frame, he joins an elite class of pitchers with the highest average extension in baseball. Williams throws his fastball an average of 7 feet 6 inches off the rubber, more than 12% of the way to the plate. Among pitchers who have thrown 300 fastballs this season, the only pitchers to match the average extension are Alexis Diaz, Devin Williams, Tyler Glasnowand Logan Gilbert. Decent fastball throwing company, for sure.

The result is that his four-seamer, which comes out of his hand at an average of 95.7 mph but has a shorter distance to travel to the plate than almost any other pitcher, requires hitters to react seems to be 97.8 mph pitch, a 2.1 mph increase in perceived speed. This is the fifth largest positive difference between perceived speed and release speed, after Díaz, Williams, Gilbert, and Glasnow. (Devan Fink wrote about this relationship between extension and increased velocity in 2021.)

Similar toolkits by Williams and Bibee yield similar results on this point. Among pitchers with 50 innings as a starter, Williams’ 2.80 ERA ranks eighth, while his 3.61 FIP is 29th and his 4.16 xFIP is just above average. He’s also more reliant on fly balls than xFIP would like him to be, but keeping contact slow on fly balls is one of the keys to outperforming his xFIP, a pattern that continues at every level. his professional career, as brief as some of the stints in the past.

Across the majors this season, balls hit with a launch angle between 30 and 50 degrees had a .568 SLG and a .301 wOBA. Williams’ pitches hit in this range produced just .379 slugging and a .205 wOBA. And that’s not because he’s below his expected results in that range – based on contact quality, the .379 SLG is actually slightly higher than his .335 xSLG, while the .205 wOBA is nothing. He always gets hit by air, but he never gets hit by air.

He was able to keep the hard contact – which he had limited so much in the first place – to the ground, where it could do less damage. While his overall fly ball rate was north of 40%, only 12 of his 49 hard-hit balls (24.5%) were fly balls. His fastball was particularly effective in this regard – just five of 31 (16.1%) fastballs hit at 95 mph or more were in fly ball range.

Now, this is an early look, and it’s always dangerous to put too much stock in how any particular 10 games pan out. As Eric Longenhagen pointed out in his write-up on Williams earlier this year, the big righty has a history with injuries, including some concerning back issues dating back to his time at ECU, and that history can’ g will rear its ugly head at any point. But as far as walks and fly balls are concerned, there was a lot to like from the first half. He’s getting healthy swing-and-miss rates north of 28% from three of his four pitches (all but the changeup), and his average exit velocity, hard-hit percentage, and barrel percentage is at or above the 74th percentile. If he can stay healthy, he should have a decent big league career ahead of him. If he can continue to fool hitters effectively, it could be even better.

Since the All-Star break, the Guardians starters — without Bieber, McKenzie, or Quantrill — have led baseball by more than half a run in ERA and rank third in opponent average and slugging, fifth in wOBA, ninth in FIP, and an incredible 26th in xFIP . Part of that disparity may be the offensive vacuum created at Progressive Field — it’s 2023 park factor is the lowest in the league — but part of it seems to be the limited damage seen on spinning fly balls as a group. During that time, they had the third highest fly ball rate in baseball and the lowest HR/FB ratio. There’s an element of luck to that — a high-flying starting pitching group is a bit of a trapeze act — but there’s also something to be said for their collective ability to limit quality contact in the air. As a group, they also have the lowest barrel rate and second lowest hard-hit rate on fly balls.

The fact that Allen, Bibee, and Williams have performed as well as they have in a season riddled with pitching injuries should make Cleveland fans feel comfortable with the rotation options they will have in 2024. A single 24-year-old top-100 pitching prospect flying through the minors and having this level of success at the big league level would make any team excited for their future. These Guardians have three.