Erik Boland: Yankees show power at the plate and on the mound
The Yankees' Cam Schlittler pitches against the Giants in the first inning at Oracle Park on Friday in San Francisco. Credit: Getty Images/Ezra Shaw
SAN FRANCISCO — The Yankees won with finesse in their season opener Wednesday night.
Power prevailed in Game 2 on Friday afternoon. At the plate and on the mound.
Aaron Judge showed that his season somehow wasn’t over after seven fruitless at-bats, crushing a two-run homer off Giants lefthander Robbie Ray in the sixth inning to break a scoreless tie in a 3-0 win that gave the Yankees a 2-0 start. Two batters later, Giancarlo Stanton roped one 414 feet to left to make it 3-0, with the three-run inning making a winner out of Cam Schlittler.
The second-year righthander in many ways was the story of Friday’s game (Yankees pitchers have recorded back-to-back shutouts, opening a season with 18 straight scoreless innings for the first time in franchise history).
Yes, Judge’s homer put the Yankees on the board and, with the ridiculous way the three-time American League MVP was under fire for what amounted to one bad game, it was good to get a silly narrative out of the way (don’t fret, there will be others).
Because Judge, more or less, continues to be a given until he proves otherwise.
This is a player, after all, who in 2024 was hitting .197 as late as May 2. And there was much of the familiar noise, with Aaron Boone even getting asked if he was considering “dropping” him in the order. (That query landed on the Mount Rushmore of asinine questions Boone has received in his tenure, now in its ninth year.)
Judge ended that season hitting .322 with 58 homers, 144 RBIs and a 1.159 OPS to take home his second MVP. No, he wasn’t on the list of question marks for this season.
Schlittler wasn’t necessarily on that list either, but there nonetheless was some curiosity about exactly how he would follow up his dazzling half-season debut in 2025.
Even with the minor lower-back issue that led the Yankees to slow-play Schlittler throughout spring training — the reason he was on a pitch count of roughly 70 on Friday — he was among the reasons the organization felt it would be able to survive in the early part of the season without Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon on the mound.
The opposition, too.
“He’s what they look like,” one rival manager told Newsday during spring training. “He’s a scary [expletive].”
By “they,” the manager meant potential ace. Not potential inning-eater at the back end or middle of the rotation, but the top (the expletive is left to your imagination).
Schlittler, as he did in most of his 14 starts last season after being promoted from the minors, resembled an ace in his 5 1⁄3 innings Friday. “Right where he left off last year,” Judge said.
Schlittler allowed one hit, a two-out double in the second inning by Heliot Ramos, and struck out eight, A strike-thrower in the minor leagues and after he came up, Schlittler did not walk a batter and fired strikes on 49 of his 68 pitches.
“Throwing a lot of strikes, limiting the walks is very important,” said Schlittler, who, though understated, is among the more confident players in the clubhouse.
He threw the five fastest pitches in the game, according to baseballsavant.com: 100.1 mph, 99.8, 99.5, 99.5 and 99.4.
Schlittler’s most impressive inning might have been the fifth. He struck out Jung Hoo Lee on an 86-mph curveball that darted down and inside on the lefty-swinging hitter, then struck out a helpless-looking Ramos swinging at a 98-mph fastball for the second out. Casey Schmitt grounded routinely to third to end the 13-pitch inning.
“I was glad I was able to be in centerfield today. You get a really good perspective,” Cody Bellinger said. “Obviously, an electric fastball, has a curveball he can land for a strike. The cutter, sinker’s going different ways, and he understands how to command both of them. That’s a good recipe right there.”
One that has the Yankees feeling as if they eventually could have as potent a 1-2-3 rotation punch in the sport with Max Fried, Cole coming back perhaps by late May and Schlittler. (Rodon will be back, too. All he did in 2025 was compile an 18-9 record and a 3.09 ERA.)
Fried and Cole already have established their bona fides as top-of-the rotation pieces. Schlittler?
More times than not on the mound, he seems to be what “they” look like.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
