What's the Score, Gavin?

The Guardians have had their farm system running as a starting pitching factory for some time now, we all know that. Whether it's top prospects working out, like CC Sabathia, under-the-radar draft picks finding better stuff under the Guardians' development, like Shane Bieber, or trading for other teams' minor leaguers and helping them find their way, like Corey Kluber. Regardless of the method of acquisition, the last 20 or so years have seen some of the best pitchers in baseball cut their teeth in Cleveland. Many of them have hit the ground running as soon as they get the call to the Majors. There are ups and downs, but a stat I like to see to compare the best outings of a season is game score.Game Score is a Bill James classic stat that later got updated by sabermetrician Tom Tango in 2014. The 2014 formula goes like this:

• Start with 40 points• Add 2 points for each out recorded (or 6 points per inning)• Add 1 additional point for every strikeout• Remove 2 points for each walk allowed• Remove 2 points for each hit allowed• Remove 3 points for each run allowed (earned or unearned)• Remove 6 additional points for each home run allowed

40 points constitute a replacement-level score, and an average game won't earn more than 70 points total. It's a bit of a basic statistic, only requiring simple addition and subtraction, but it's nice to see a stat carry some advanced weight without having to jump through the hoops to get to WAR or ERA+. What brought me down the rabbit hole of this particular stat was a thought for an old, reliable former Cleveland pitcher, Josh Tomlin.Tomlin was known best for always throwing strikes. But next to not walking many batters, he was also susceptible to the long ball, as most control pitchers are. Limited by a fastball that could barely get a speeding ticket on I-80, Tomlin most often found his way as a pitcher by dinking and ducking and magicking his way to 5 innings every outing before the third time through the lineup would find him through the smoke and mirrors. On one June 2014 night in Seattle, though, Tomlin brought all his best tricks. Working the corners and tossing his best curveballs, Josh Tomlin held the Mariners to one solitary hit, a single by Kyle Seager, no walks, and 11 strikeouts. That was good for a game score of 96. That stat line was burned into my memory and was sparked back up by the recent line of a Guardians rookie hurler.Now, getting to the man of the hour, Gavin Williams has put up back-to-back starts of at least 10 strikeouts while also lighting up the radar gun a bit more than he had previously shown in the majors. His average fastball velocity has ticked up to 95.9mph in the majors so far and reached a new max of 100.1mph this week. But while his most recent start did produce 10 Ks, only going 5 innings and allowing a run on 5 hits tanked his game score to a mere 63. The start before, however, is where we saw a standout prospect deliver on what is hopefully only the first slice of the big potential pie. Against Toronto on August 7th, Williams put up a line of 7 shutout innings, allowing only one hit and one walk, striking out 12. That's good for a game score of 86.That Gavin Williams guy might have some stuff, right? But he's no Josh Tomlin. (Josh Tomlin's max velocity in 2014 was about 92mph)Where does this game score rank in recent Cleveland history, as far as rookie pitchers go? As much as I would love to turn part of this article into a love letter to the prospective hope we had for Adam Miller and his 100mph fastball, he never actually made it to The Show. Someday, I am going to wax poetic about all the Next Great Hope prospects the Indians/Guardians have had over the last 20 years, but today is not that day. Instead, let's have a quick look at some notable big leaguers:

• CC Sabathia, rookie year 2001, highest game score 82, 7 IP, 0 runs, 1 hit, 1 walk, 8 Ks
• Roberto Hernandez, then Fausto Carmona, first FULL YEAR as a starter 2007 (his rookie year was 2006, but that was mostly out of the bullpen), highest game score 85, 8 IP, 0 runs, 3 hits, 0 walks, 9 Ks
• Danny Salazar, rookie year 2013, highest game score 70 (in his first big league start), 6 IP, 1 ER, 2 hits, 1 walk, 7 Ks
• Shane Bieber, rookie year 2018, highest game score 77, 7 IP, 0 runs, 4 hits, 1 walk, 9 Ks

All of these pitchers went on to be All-Stars, and all of them have had different degrees of success in the majors afterward. CC will probably be in the Hall of Fame, Hernandez never found that dominance again, same and worse with injuries for Salazar, and Bieber has had ups and downs with stuff, even though his results have remained mostly spectacular when healthy. Where that leaves Gavin Williams is obviously open for interpretation, but for comparisons to these pitchers, he comes in somewhere between Sabathia and Bieber. Williams is already 24, which puts him closer to Bieber's age at rookie time of 23 than CC's age of 20. However, Williams' stature (6'6") and stuff (upper 90s fastball) is more similar to Sabathia (6'6", fastball up to 98) than Bieber (6'3", fastball somewhere between 89 and 95, depending on the year). So we can expect a Cy Young and multiple All-Star appearances the next few years for Gavin Williams, thank you all for coming.(Just for fun, if we go way back, in 1955 Herb Score's best rookie game score was an 89 in a complete game shutout, one hit, 6 walks, 10 Ks. Bob Feller's best rookie game score in 1936 was merely an 83 in a complete game where he allowed 2 runs, but also had 17 STRIKEOUTS! A true legend.)I didn't talk about fellow rookie standout starters Logan T. Allen, Tanner Bibee, or Selby Is Godcast team MVP Xzavion Curry because there really are too many good words to be said about the young rotation this year that I only wanted to focus on Gavin Williams when compared to the past. This one start is all merely the apex of the first of what will hopefully be many productive seasons for Williams. In fact, it is not outside the realm of possibility that he puts together an even better game score later this year (his second big league start was already an 80), though an innings cap limiting him at some point feels much more likely. But with a full arsenal of pitches (changeup, curve, slider, and fastball), and the proof in the game score pudding already, we could be watching the next great Cleveland pitcher, and it's so fun how often we get to say that.