Yankees' Cam Schlittler was a late bloomer
New York Yankees pitcher Cam Schlittler throws in the first inning against the Washington Nationals at Yankee Stadium on Monday. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
What would you think if you learned that the Yankees had a prospect who throws a fastball that averages nearly 98 miles per hour and has a genuine knee-buckling, 12-to-6 curve?
And if you learned that the prospect stands 6-6 and weighs 225 pounds and has a perfect pitcher’s body, all arms and legs coming at the batter? And that he shot his way from Double-A to Triple-A this season while impressing at both levels?
You’d be pretty excited about that prospect, right? You’d be clamoring for the front office to call him up, as Mets fans did before the team inserted heralded young hurler Nolan McLean into the rotation earlier this month with great anticipation and success.
Then how in an era of never-ending hype about baseball prospects did Cam Schlittler arrive in the Yankees’ rotation in such an under-the-radar manner?
Schlittler made his eighth start and threw six shutout innings in the Yankees’ 10-5 victory over Washington at Yankee Stadium on Monday night. He gave up four hits, walked three and struck out eight, and left with a 7-0 lead.
Nationals All-Star outfielder James Wood got a heaping helping of Schlittler’s stuff. Schlittler struck him out looking leading off the game on a 101-mph fastball and then got Wood swinging through an 85-mph curve to end the third.
Nasty.
Wood reached Schlittler for a leadoff single in the sixth. After a walk to CJ Abrams and a visit from pitching coach Matt Blake, Schlittler struck out Luis Garcia Jr. on a bounced 82-mph curve. On the next pitch — Schlittler’s 96th — Josh Bell bounced into an inning- and outing-ending 4-6-3 double play.
In his last outing, the 24-year-old righthander from Red Sox country (Walpole, Massachusetts) had a perfect game against Tampa Bay for six innings before allowing a single to Chandler Simpson to open the seventh.
Over his last five outings, Schlittler has a 1.30 ERA and 31 strikeouts in 27 2⁄3 innings. Overall, his ERA is 2.76.
The Yankees are not shy about hyping their prospects. Neither are fans nor media. We all probably knew more about Jasson Dominguez and Anthony Volpe than we did about some members of our own families before they were called up to the bigs.
Spencer Jones and George Lombard Jr. are now riding the hype train in the high minors, and Yankees fans are already intimately acquainted with both.
But at a time when prospects are stars before they play one big-league game, there was a lack of hype before Schlittler made his debut against Seattle in the Bronx on July 9. Again, that’s especially true when compared to McLean’s first start on Aug. 16, when the anticipation was high and he met it by electrifying the Citi Field crowd with 51⁄3 shutout innings and eight strikeouts in a 3-1 win over Seattle.
McLean was the Mets’ No. 3 prospect when he got the call, according to MLB Pipeline. Schlittler was No. 10 on the Yankees’ list. Either the Yankees have nine really great prospects ahead of him, or the prospect-raters didn’t get this one right.
Schlittler is a late bloomer. He wasn’t drafted by the Yankees until the seventh round in 2022 out of Northeastern. He wasn’t initially on the top prospect lists, and for good reason.
“In ’22, he was throwing 91-92 miles an hour,” manager Aaron Boone said. “But was a strike-thrower right away, and now, all of a sudden, in a couple years, he’s added 6, 7, 8 miles an hour to the fastball. Still [has] the ability to throw strikes . . . I think it’s just he’s physically matured a lot, and obviously the stuff has gone to another level in pretty short order. So that’s allowed him to kind of ascend somewhat quietly and quickly now here in the last year and a half.”
Asked how he was able to increase his velocity, Schlittler said: “I think it comes down to really hard work. Just kind of putting my work in in the offseason. I figured out my body a little bit. Just growing into myself as a player and a person. People can tell you what to do, but you’ve got to be able to go do it when no one’s watching.”
Now, everyone is watching. And they like what they see.
“He’s good,” Boone said. “I mean, he’s good.”
In his first start, Schlittler gave up three runs in 51⁄3 innings and struck out seven against Seattle.
Before the July 31 trade deadline, the Yankees were looking to add another starter but must have deemed the price too high.
Did the price other teams asked for include Schlittler?
“I knew it was going to be really hard for our guys to trade him,” Boone said. “I’m sure they would have had to have been overwhelmed with something. I think that’s how we view Cam. This is a future staple of our rotation.”
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
