Can’t win them all, I suppose. Although, tonight was a frustrating game in the fashion of the summer 2025 Guardians. Gavin Williams took the mound this evening and really struggled to find the zone. He threw a measly 31% of his pitches in the strike zone, per Statcast. The good news is he generated 15 whiffs! His stuff also looked fantastic across the board, just would’ve been nice if said stuff could’ve been located in that lovely white box that appears on the television. Gavin’s sweeper, especially,
looked fantastic tonight. He seems to have tweaked that pitch this offseason, and is now more consistently throwing it east-west.
Some more good news as Chase DeLauter homered AGAIN in his first at-bat tonight, an almost exact replica of his first home run in the opening night game.
Per MLB researcher Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports on X), DeLauter is the third player since (at least) 1900 to record 3 home runs in their first two career regular season games. The most recent player was Trevor Story in 2016.
Anyway, Gavin’s command struggles eventually came back to bite him when he surrendered a 3-run homer to Cole Young (native Clevelander, of course) in the fourth.
Speaking of struggles, the Guardians loaded the bases in the top of the 5th with only 1 out. Hoskins and Naylor walked, and Rocchio was hit by a pitch. Kwan stepped to the plate, weakly flew out to left and, well, if you didn’t watch it live, I’ll let you watch it now.
Oops!
The Guardians offense was much less fun to watch than it was last night, unfortunately. All good things must come to an end.
DeLauter did have a weird play in the field in the 3rd. Leo Rivas hit a fly ball near the foul line in right, DeLauter seemed to have caught it in his glove, but then dropped it right after. Rivas was awarded a triple.
Newly minted Guardians reliever Colin Holderman came into the game in the 6th and promptly gave up a 2-run homer. Oops!
Another newly minted Guardians reliever Peyton Pallette (Rule 5 pick from the White Sox) made his Guardians debut today, and it went far better than Holderman’s. Pitched 2 innings, struck out 2 (Donovan and Raleigh). Got both strikeouts in his first inning, and did surrender some hard contact in his second, but did not give up a hit. His stuff looked fantastic, per Thomas Nestico (@TJStats on X)
He seems to have spontaneously added almost 5 inches of ride on his fastball in his debut, which resulted in that stellar 114 stuff+ rating.
Anyway, the Guardians look to take the series lead tomorrow night with Cantillo on the mound. It’ll be Bryan Woo for the Mariners.
