Gavin Williams Fans 12 as Guardians Win ALDS Game 5

Gavin Williams just pitched the game of his life. Two days after getting the final out of Game 4 in an emergency relief appearance, Williams struck out 12 White Sox over 5 2/3 scoreless innings, and the Cleveland Guardians won ALDS Game 5, 2-0, Saturday night at Progressive Field, per MLB.com.

That finishes one of the wildest comebacks you will see in October. Cleveland lost the first two games of the series at home and then won three straight elimination games. The Guardians are the 11th team ever to come back from 0-2 in a best-of-five postseason series and the first since the 2017 Yankees, who did it in Cleveland. Next up is the best team in the American League, the Tampa Bay Rays, in an ALCS that opens Monday night at Tropicana Field.

Williams and the bullpen set a strikeout record

Williams' 12 strikeouts tied Charles Nagy's mark from Game 4 of the 1996 ALDS for the most by a Cleveland pitcher in a postseason game, per MLB.com. He finished the series with 24 strikeouts, second most in any best-of-five postseason series behind Gerrit Cole's 25 for the Astros in the 2019 ALDS.

Then the bullpen kept it going. Erik Sabrowski, Hunter Gaddis and closer Cade Smith piled on, and Cleveland pitchers finished with 21 strikeouts. That is the most ever in a nine-inning game in MLB history, postseason or regular season. Smith, who had thrown 50 pitches across Games 3 and 4, went 1 2/3 scoreless innings for the save. Chicago managed three hits all night, per the ESPN box score.

Williams also joined a strange little club. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, via MLB.com, he is the third pitcher in postseason history to record the last out of one game and then start the next with his team facing elimination in both. The first two were Cubs pitchers in the 1910 and 1945 World Series. Williams is the only one whose team won the second game.

Jose Ramirez found the only runs he needed

The offense was one swing. In the fourth inning, Jose Ramirez golfed a two-run homer to right, scoring Steven Kwan. The pitch was just 0.74 feet off the ground, the lowest pitch he has ever homered on and the lowest for a postseason home run since pitch tracking started in 2008, per MLB.com.

This is the same guy who had hamate surgery in June and went 0-for-6 in the first two games. Over Games 3 through 5 he went 5-for-12 with two homers and seven RBIs, and he became the first Cleveland player to homer in back-to-back postseason games since Francisco Lindor in 2018.

"We lost the first two games, but we knew we could come back in those three games," Ramirez said through interpreter Agustin Rivero.

Manager Stephen Vogt put it even more simply in the clubhouse before the champagne started flying. "Backs against the wall! Three straight elimination games! You boys showed up," he yelled, per MLB.com.

Rays up next

Cleveland came into Saturday 2-9 all time in win-or-go-home games, so this one is going to live in Guardians lore for a long time. The White Sox, who led this series 2-0 and led the AL Central by 5 1/2 games with six weeks left in the regular season, are done after a season nobody saw coming.

Now the Guardians get a rested Rays team with the best record in the AL. If Williams pitches anything like this again and Ramirez stays hot, nobody in Cleveland is going to count this team out. Four more wins and they are in the World Series.