A Path to Improvement for Gavin Williams

Analyzing Key Adjustments: Unlocking Gavin Williams' Full Potential

Opening

With spring getting closer and closer every day, I feel like it's time to look at possible resurgences from pitchers. One pitcher that comes to mind is Gavin Williams, who struggled in 2024’. To me, this was in large part due to him coming off an elbow injury, which had effects on his arsenal that I'll touch on later. Sadly, this injury sidelined him for the majority of the season, and when he did come back, he just wasn't the same, producing a 4.86 ERA, 4.08 xERA, and 3.67 FIP.

Photo Credits to WNCT

Despite this, I think there's a way to get Williams back to his prior effectiveness. What jumps out to me as low-hanging fruits are implementations to generate separation between his cutter and slider as well as produce more depth on his changeup. I'll get into this more in detail as we progress, but those are just some things I can see him implementing.

Delivery Characteristics

Before getting into the adjustments I could see the Guardians making to Williams, let's take a look at his delivery characteristics. Williams strikes me as a pitcher who leans more so towards pronation bias due to his wrist orientation at delivery and him cheating towards supination to achieve his curveball shape. Looking at his delivery though, Williams uses his body effectively to generate above-average velocity by implementing an effective drift and drop phase at the beginning of his delivery. As a result, this gets his entire delivery in motion and allows for him to use his big frame to his advantage. To go along with this, Williams produces a below-average release height of 5.7’ thanks to his outlier 7.2’ extension and 35-degree arm angle, which gives Williams deception from the basis that he's able to get down to a below-average release height from such a large frame.

Cutter and Slider Separation

A main issue I see with Williams current arsenal is his lack of separation on his slider and cutter. Coming into the year, Williams was holding out from throwing his slider to ease back from his elbow injury, but as he began to implement it back in as he progressed from his injury, it began to blend with his cutter. I believe the reason behind it is because of the addition of the cutter. I say this because with the addition of pitches, especially as a pronator, you open yourself to the consequences of altering your current arsenal/shapes, which is evident with his slider. Of course this wasn't intentional, but rather an effect of adding an additional pitch.

This causes him to have a major decrease in familiarity with this pitch, which is evident by his slider locations. Leading to a major drop in effectiveness on this pitch, going from a .157 AVG, .215 wOBA, .240 xwOBA, 31.8 Whiff%, 33.1 O-Sw% in 23’ to a .258 AVG, .301 wOBA, .293 xwOBA, 24.2 Whiff%, and a 21.8 O-Sw% in 24’. I believe to separate these pitches, Williams may have to implement a spike within his slider grip, which would allow for greater depth possibilities. A positive of this is that Williams uses a spike grip on his curveball to achieve its shape, which shows he has some familiarity with this orientation. If worse comes to worst and Williams is still unable to produce separation between these two pitches, he could just drop his slider altogether and commit to his cutter.

Altering of Changeup

A change I could see the Guardians implementing for Williams is developing a changeup with more depth. Last year Williams was throwing a changeup with very little velocity separation to go along with poor depth. Typically with changeups, you don't want to have poor velocity separation paired with poor depth because it makes the changeup mere the 4-seam in ball flight. This sadly led to poor results on this pitch with a .417 AVG, .547 wOBA, .446 xwOBA, 14.8 Whiff%, and a 36.5 O-Sw%. Thankfully this pitch was only used 5% of the time, but with a possible implementation of the shape he was toying with at the end of 24, it could allow for this pitch to really improve its effectiveness.

In Williams final regular season start in 24, he threw two changeups with much more depth, producing a shape of 14.2 iHB and 5.2 iVB. Of course, this was in a small sample and produced no results, but I'm intrigued to see Williams throw this shape more. It would allow for him to produce more arm-side depth, which he currently lacks at the present moment. Some other orientations he could toy with as well are a kick change to possibly generate this needed depth. I say this with caution, though, due to the effects it could have on the rest of his arsenal as a result, but it is definitely something for Williams to continue to toy with in the spring.

Pressure Off Fastball

With the possible addition of these changes, it would allow for Williams to take some much-needed pressure off his 4-seam. In 2024, Williams threw this pitch over 51% of the time, in large part due to his minimal weapons at his disposal. You can expect how this turned out with his 4-seam being hit around, producing a .243 xAVG, .301 wOBA, .293 xwOBA, 22.0 whiff%, and a 35.6 O-SW%. This pitch shows it has the ability to be effective with its whiff and chase results, but because of his extreme dependence on it, it's just not as successful as it could be. Emphasizing just how important the changes I listed are to his development.

Conclusion

To me, Williams has the makings to be a top-of-the-rotation arm, but due to undesirable changes and suboptimal shapes, he has yet to produce that for Cleveland. I think that a possible spike orientation on his slider and the continued development of a more depthy changeup could be the route to that next step in effectiveness. In turn, this would allow him to take pressure off his fastball, which was not the most effective pitch in 24’. All in all, Williams will be a fun name to watch this season, especially with these changes hanging in the balance.