Gavin Williams overcomes frightful first, nearly pitches Guardians' first no-hitter in 44 years

NEW YORK (AP) — Two hard hit comebackers in the first inning Wednesday afternoon had Gavin Williams worrying about the direction his start would take against the New York Mets. Instead, the Cleveland Guardians right-hander nearly made history. Williams came within two outs of Cleveland's first no-hitter in 44 years before Juan Soto homered with one out in the ninth and Hunter Gaddis finished the combined one-hitter in a 4-1 win. "Man, it was that close," Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. "I thought he was going to get it." Williams wasn't thinking no-hitter after an eventful first. Francisco Lindor's 107.2 mph liner on Williams' second pitch knocked off his glove — the right-hander scrambled for the loose ball and threw out the former Cleveland star — before Williams snared another liner by Pete Alonso for the final out. "It scared me, I will say that," Williams said of Lindor's liner. "I thought I was going to have to change pants or something. And then Alonso did the same thing and I thought I was really going to have to." Three walks over the next three innings raised his pitch count and seemed to make a no-hitter bid unlikely. But Williams, who was at 61 pitches after walking Brandon Nimmo with one out in the fourth, needed just 53 pitches to retire the next 15 batters. "At one point I didn't even care about the pitch count," said Williams, whose previous career high for pitches was 109. "Didn't matter if I went 140." Vogt had nobody warming in the ninth, when Williams struck out Lindor before Soto homered just beyond the leaping grasp of centerfielder Angel Martínez. "Man, I wish I could be like Spiderman, get that ball," Martínez said. With Gaddis warming, Williams retired Pete Alonso on a fly out before walking Nimmo for the third time. Gaddis needed just three pitches to get Mark Vientos to fly out. Williams finished at 126 pitches, the most in the majors since Alex Cobb threw 131 in a one-hit complete game for the San Francisco Giants on Aug. 29, 2023. His no-hit bid was the longest for Cleveland since Carlos Carrasco had his no-hitter broken up with two outs in the ninth inning by Tampa Bay's Joey Butler on July 1, 2015. "With the four-run lead like that, you've got to let him go," Vogt said. "You don't know how many chances a pitcher's ever going to have to do it. So he was going to get to go the whole way." The near no-hitter continued a breakout season for Williams, whose 2.08 ERA since May 3 is the lowest in the AL. "Kind of Gavin Williams' coming-out party this year," Hedges said. But the party to celebrate the end of the longest active no-hitter drought in the majors will have to wait. The Guardians have not thrown a no-hitter in their last 7,115 games dating back to May 15, 1981, when Len Barker twirled the eighth perfect game of the modern era in a 3-0 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. Barker watched the game from behind home plate at Cleveland's Progressive Field, where he was participating in a workout with the Guardians' corporate partners. Still, to come so close to joining Barker in the history books was not an outcome Williams could have imagined in the first inning, "Heck no," Williams said with a grin. "After that, I thought it was going to go one way. And it was not the way I thought."