I mean, are we surprised?
Last week, Gavin Williams twirled a gem against the Minnesota Twins, missing Twins’ bats at among his best rate of the young 2025 season. For Gavin, 2025 has been about as up and down as could be, and his overall ability to put hitters away and avoid walks is a large part in why. That being said, a major bright light shone upon Target Field for Williams last Wednesday.
Williams saw a rough April give way to a much steadier May, running a 2.28 ERA over 20 innings (4 starts) with 29 strikeouts. His whiff rate in April sat at 29.1%, and that has improved to 32.3%, a small improvement, yes, but it brings Gavin’s whiff rate to a steady 7.3% better than league average. A big reason for this improvement? The advancement of his cutter and the slow roll out of a new pitch, a sinker.
Finding fastball variance was less of an expander of Williams’ arsenal and more done out of necessity. Despite throwing a consistent 97 mph on his heater, Williams’ four-seam fastball was grading among the worst fastballs in the sport. The movement has suboptimal in spite of its velocity, and hitters weren’t fooled when the only pitch they were seeing in the zone all at-bat was a heater, so they sat on it. Heading into his start against the Dodgers, Williams’ four-seamer graded out at 5th worst in all of baseball with a -7 run value out of 300 qualified pitchers. Not great! At the end of the day, something needed to change, or Williams’ bright potential was on the verge of fizzling out.
Last season, Williams worked his way back from injury, but he struggled mightily finding a differential between his cutter and slider, and it led to a lot of hard hit balls, a lot of runs, and a lot of short outings for the young righty. This season, it’s been a much better split as Gavin’s slider has morphed into a sweeper, and he slow rolled back his cutter, and now it’s turning into his best weapon. Thus far in May, Williams is throwing his cutter a lot more and has not surrendered a hit. He’s yet to have a ball in play register in triple-digits against it.
On the season, Williams has yet to have a cutter barreled, and the hard hit rate is sitting at a measly 25%. It’s become what he’s needed, and that’s something to keep hitters off the fastball in the zone, and it worked wonders for his four-seam.
Going into the start against Minnesota, Williams’ cutter rate sat at just 3%. His four-seam fastball’s results up to that point? A .341 average against with a .600 slugging percentage that saw about a 16% barrel rate on average when put in play. Specifically against right handed batters, Williams’ slash line was impossibly bad. Opponents were batting .450 against his heater with a .775 SLG, 53% hard hit rate, and .483 xwOBA. Against Minnesota and Los Angeles, the story has been different. Yes, the six walks against the Dodgers was obviously bad, and it plus the balk were the large reason he gave up the three runs past the ridiculous Ohtani home run (seriously, HOW did he hit that out?), but there were a lot of positives for Gavin as well.
Over his last two starts, Williams’ cutter usage has grown from 3.0% to 25.6%, and against righties, that usage is sitting at 19.2%, up from 2.2%. His fastball has seen a world of difference because of this. Overall against Minnesota and Los Angeles, Williams’ fastball stats now sit at a .214 average against with a .429 SLG (thanks, Shohei). The biggest difference Williams has seen has been in his fastball whiff rate. It’s gone from paltry 21.4%, below the league average 24% for fastballs thrown 96+ mph, all the way up to 42.5% over these past two starts. He’s basically doubled it.
By the way, did you guys hear the team brought back Corey Kluber in an advisory role for pitchers? Really cool! Anyways, Gavin Williams randomly added a sinker against the Twins as well. He didn’t throw it at all against the Dodgers, and it’s hard to blame him. The Dodgers destroy sinkers, posting baseball’s fifth-best SLG (.491) and xwOBA against them (.387) and fourth highest hard hit rate at 50%, and those numbers only get better against right handed pitchers (.375 SLG, .401 xwOBA, 51.5% HH%).
What Gavin’s overall usage of his sinker will be from this point on has yet to be seen, but the stuff+ formulas really liked it. Thomas Nestico, better known on Twitter by @TJStats, had Gavin’s sinker at 102 stuff+, averaging 94.7 mph, 11.2 inches of induced vertical break, and 16.8 inches of horizontal break. Of the 169 starting pitchers who have thrown at least the same amount of sinkers as Gavin has (4), Williams’ horizontal run on his sinker would rank within the top 40 alongside the likes of Garrett Crochet, Joe Ryan, and Chris Bassitt.
Gavin Williams’ evolution as a pitcher is far from done, but this is easily the biggest step towards being not just a reliable starting pitcher, but possibly evolving into a dominant one that we’ve seen from the Big Rig. A year ago, Gavin’s cutter was unrecognizable from his slider. Now, it’s become among the best in baseball. Can his sinker get there or will it fall by the wayside? Only time will tell.