Gavin Williams has already lived through two of the White Sox’s best tricks this season: make him work, then wait for a mistake.
That formula hurt the Guardians in July when Miguel Vargas worked a 10-pitch at-bat, stayed alive through a pair of 100 mph fastballs, and eventually turned a sweeper into a three-run homer before rain interrupted play. Cleveland still won that game after a two-hour delay, but the swing lingered. A few weeks later, Tristan Peters dragged Williams into an even longer fight - 18 pitches, 12 foul balls, one walk, and then a six-run Chicago inning that flipped the game and gave the White Sox the season series and head-to-head tiebreaker.
Now Williams gets Peters and Chicago again in a far bigger spot.
Cleveland trails the American League Division Series 1-0 after Saturday’s 3-0 loss, so Monday’s Game 2 carries obvious pressure. Another defeat would send the Guardians to Chicago needing three straight wins to stay alive. Williams, though, isn’t treating it like anything special.
“It’s just another game,” Williams said. “Just going to go out there and try and do what I know I can do and execute and try to help the team win.”
If there’s a plan on the other side, it starts with the same stubborn approach Peters used on Sept. 14.
Williams was rolling through five scoreless innings that day before Andrew Benintendi opened the sixth with an infield single. Peters came up, fell behind 1-2, and then turned the at-bat into a grinder.
He fouled off 12 of the final 15 pitches he saw as Williams tried fastballs, curveballs and sweepers before missing with a curveball on pitch No. 18.
Williams entered the inning at 89 pitches and left at a season-high 113. Both runners he left on base scored, and Chicago poured in six runs.
On Sunday, Williams was asked whether he would change anything about that sequence. At first he joked about walking Peters earlier. Then he got serious.
“No,” he said. “There’s nothing I would change on that.
He was just fouling off good pitches. And then he took some good ones as well, but nothing I would change in that at-bat.”
His preference for Monday is a lot simpler.
“Hopefully get him out in three pitches, not let him foul off everything.”
Peters remembers that duel from the other side, and he knew exactly what was happening as it stretched on. Asked who tires more in a battle like that, he leaned toward the pitcher.
“I’d argue maybe for the pitcher more,” Peters said when asked who tires more during that kind of battle. “Especially Gavin, he’s throwing near a hundred miles an hour.”
Peters said he deliberately avoided calling time because he sensed Williams fading.
“I knew he was getting tired, so I was just trying to keep him tired,” Peters said.
That part of the White Sox approach won’t change. Peters said Chicago wants to keep pushing Williams’ pitch count and force him into the edges of the zone.
“Getting to their bullpen, putting some stress on them that way, I think it’s big,” Peters said.
The numbers back up how difficult that has been for Cleveland. Williams made four starts against Chicago this season and went 0-1 with a 3.98 ERA over 20 1/3 innings.
He gave up 17 hits and eight walks while striking out 28, which works out to 12.4 strikeouts per nine innings. White Sox hitters batted .227 with a .638 OPS against him.
Chicago manager Will Venable knows exactly what kind of assignment that creates.
“I don’t know how anyone hits Gavin Williams,” Venable said. “When I think about effective starters in this league and just how physical he is, he’s got the extension.
He throws 100 miles an hour. He can really spin the baseball.
It’s a real challenge.”
Venable pointed right back to Peters’ marathon at-bat as the model.
“You go into the starts against him knowing that it’s going to be a battle and kind of have the mentality that Tristan Peters had in that at-bat where it’s a grind,” Venable said. “That’s how you’re going to have to beat him, if you can at all.”
Guardians manager Stephen Vogt knows the feeling from the dugout.
From a fan’s seat, he said those at-bats are entertaining. As a manager, not so much.
“You hate it.”
Still, Vogt is glad Williams is the one taking the ball in Game 2. He lined Williams up behind rookie Parker Messick because he sees them as Cleveland’s two best starters. Messick was on regular rest for Game 1, while Williams used the extra time to throw a simulated game and keep his workload where it needed to be.
Vogt said after Saturday’s shutout loss that Cleveland simply got beat, but he also pointed to what comes next.
“These are two very equally talented teams that know each other really well that have battled back and forth all year, and I don’t expect that to change,” Vogt said. “We’re really happy that Gavin is taking the ball because he is a big-time pitcher for us.”
“We still have a great opportunity ahead of us to even the series and go to Chicago with a chance to win it,” Vogt said.
For Williams, the challenge is familiar: a White Sox lineup that has already shown it can turn one long at-bat into a big inning. Vargas did it with 10 pitches in July.
Peters did it with 18 in September. And now Williams gets another shot to finish the job before the White Sox can drag him back into another fight.
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