Yankees have reason to believe in Cam Schlittler as their Game 3 starter
Yankees starting pitcher Cam Schlittler delivers against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 5. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
When the Yankees begin the playoffs, either Tuesday as the wild-card host or the following Saturday as the AL East champs, they’ll have the competitive advantage of going back-to-back with 19-game winner Max Fried and 18-game winner Carlos Rodon.
Then, presumably, comes the guy with the highest strikeout rate and hardest velocity of any rotation member this year — rookie phenom Cam Schlittler.
The Yankees have yet to announce a Game 3 starter. But just as Rodon’s schedule was adjusted this week to line him up behind Fried for the playoffs, Schlittler — who will start Saturday against the Orioles — is on track to pitch again Thursday, which would be the deciding Game 3 of the Wild Card Series.
There’s no reason to overthink this decision. Schlittler already has displayed the electric stuff and unflappable mindset to handle whatever comes his way, a major-league maturity that seems ahead of schedule for a 24-year-old who jumped two levels this season and spent only five starts at Triple-A Scranton.
He’s been putting on pinstripes for just under three months but already was wearing champagne this week, having experienced a playoff-clinching party after Tuesday’s victory over the White Sox. Before Friday’s series opener against the Orioles, I asked Schlittler how that compared to any of his previous celebrations at the lower levels.
“Not the same,” Schlittler said, smiling. “You maybe have two bottles of champagne total, everyone’s got a couple of beers, and that’s it. Here it’s a whole different thing.”
No kidding. The Bronx is a different universe from Scranton and Double-A Somerset, his two previous stops this season. And that’s typically the argument for being hesitant handing the baseball to a relative newbie on the sport’s biggest stage come October.
But Schlittler is a different animal, too. He doesn’t come off as a kid rushed up July 9 to fill the vacancy left by Clarke Schmidt, who needed a second Tommy John surgery. First off, Schlittler stands 6-6, so he fits right in among the Yankees' giants. Also, he’s got a confident ease about him, which probably is related to the fact that he has a rocket for a right arm.
Schlittler’s four-seam fastball averages 98.0 mph, a velocity that ranks 17th in the majors and fourth among starters — behind only the Reds’ Hunter Greene, the Brewers’ Jacob Misiorowski and the Pirates’ soon-to-be Cy Young Award winner, Paul Skenes. His 10.23 K/9 is a tick above the Twins’ Joe Ryan (10.12) and right below Skenes and the Brewers’ Freddy Peralta, who are tied at 10.36. As for strikeout rate, Schlittler’s 27.0% sits between the Mariners’ Bryan Woo (27.1) and the Cardinals’ Sonny Gray (26.7).
That's some decent company for a fast-climbing seventh-rounder out of the 2022 draft, and Schlittler has earned the Yankees’ trust in short order. Seeing him in spring training convinced manager Aaron Boone that he’d be on the radar for this season, and now that Schlittler is here, he’s hardly giving off rookie vibes.
“I’ve been super-impressed,” Boone said. “He seems to have that good ‘it’ quality about him, where he does have a lot of confidence, but a lot of self-awareness, too. He’s real accountable — wants to keep getting better and kind of move that needle. The timing of him coming up . . . earning his way up here and then really giving us a good shot in the arm in the rotation, that was big.”
Handling some early adversity has been huge, too. Understandably, there have been a few hiccups, the worst coming on Sept. 5, when he didn’t make it out of the second inning after giving up four runs in a 7-1 loss to the Blue Jays. Schlittler also had a five-walk night on Sept. 16 against the Twins at Target Field and lasted only 4 1/3 innings, only the third time in 13 starts he didn’t complete at least five.
Still, he has a 2.81 ERA in his last 10 starts, with 60 strikeouts in those 51 1/3 innings. That’s a pretty convincing runway heading into October.
And as far as the postseason is concerned, how much bigger could that be for someone whose major-league debut took place in the Bronx roughly 11 weeks ago against the eventual AL West champion Mariners, with a crowd of 35,651 on hand (including all of his extended family and friends). You get the sense that Schlittler is equipped to handle the uptick in pressure. He’s been grinding (and succeeding) for a while now.
“For me, every start is a playoff start,” he said. “Because I came up to a team that was winning games and trying to make a playoff push, so every start has been really important. So it’s just about having the same mentality I’ve had for all 13 of my starts. Obviously, it’s going to be busy. It’s going to be loud. That’s something I think I could deal with. It’s not going to distract me from what I need to do on the field, so I’m not too worried about it.”
The Yankees shouldn’t be concerned either. They’ve needed him just to get to the playoffs, and Schlittler is capable of extending that October ride.
“He’s done a heck of a job,” Boone said.
One deserving of a promotion to Game 3 starter, that’s for sure.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
