{"id":524607,"date":"2026-01-17T04:24:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T04:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/524607\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T04:24:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T04:24:19","slug":"austin-hedges-is-extremely-high-on-this-guardians-pitcher-for-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/524607\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Hedges Is Extremely High on This Guardians Pitcher for 2026 Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cleveland Guardians have multiple pitchers who have the potential to truly break out during the 2026 season, and Austin Hedges has a front-row seat to it all. The veteran catcher continues to play a key role of mentor<\/p>\n

Hedges was recently asked during a media availability about the state of Cleveland\u2019s rotation heading into the 2026 season. While he expressed his excitement for the full group, Hedges honed in on one player in particular, he\u2019s high on for next year: Gavin Williams.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOh, I’m so pumped for our starting group. The strides that Gavin took last year, I mean, I think everybody knows we got a bona fide ace right there. That’s a guy that you put him against [Tarik] Skubal at the end of the year and he’s going pitch for pitch, which with what’s probably the best pitcher in our sport,\u201d explained Hedges.<\/p>\n

\"Aug<\/p>\n

Aug 6, 2025; New York City, New York, USA; Cleveland Guardians starting pitcher Gavin Williams (32) is greeted at the mound by third baseman Jose Ramirez (11) and shortstop Gabriel Arias (13) and catcher Austin Hedges (27) and first baseman Carlos Santana (41) during a pitching change during the ninth inning against the New York Mets at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Overall, Williams had a solid 2025 season, but it was truly a tale of two halves in the best way possible. The right-hander finally blossomed into the elite-level pitcher the Guardians foresaw in him when they selected him in the first round back in 2023.<\/p>\n

Williams still struggled with his command during the first half of the season, but bounced back to record a 2.18 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP after the All-Star Break.<\/p>\n

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Hedges believes Williams\u2019 biggest development has been \u201cjust the growth that he’s had to kind of go from being a thrower that just throws hard, [to having] nasty stuff naturally to truly being able to pitch, adding the sinker and the cutter, and really changing shapes.”<\/p>\n

Hedges would know as well as anyone the type of pitcher Williams has the potential to be; he was behind the plate for the 26-year-old\u2019s best start of the 2025 season, when he was as close as one can get to throwing a no-hitter.<\/p>\n

In that outing against the New York Mets, Williams pitched 8.2 innings while striking out six batters. It really set the tone for his dominant September, which helped Cleveland come back and win the American League Central.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t even think we’ve seen his best yet,\u201d continued Hedges. \u201cI think, uh, these next few years, he’s going to solidify himself as a household name.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cleveland Guardians have multiple pitchers who have the potential to truly break out during the 2026 season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[40216,6198,5,135,51,2565,1383,2078,538,865,4,61,954],"class_list":["post-524607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-guardians","tag-2026-season","tag-austin-hedges","tag-baseball","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-clevelandguardians","tag-gabriel-arias","tag-gavin-williams","tag-guardians","tag-jose-ramirez","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-skubal"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115908541321196658","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}