Erik Boland: Yankees' Cam Schlittler still heavy on the heat in third start of season
Yankees pitcher Cam Schlittler before his start against the Athletics on Tuesday at Yankee Stadium. Credit: Ed Murray
Wait until Cam Schlittler trots out the off-speed stuff.
The seed-throwing second-year hurler was among the most dominant pitchers in the sport two starts into his 2026 season.
His third didn’t go quite as well as the previous two as he took a no-decision on Tuesday night in the Yankees’ 5-3 win at the Stadium.
Schlittler allowed three runs (all earned) in five innings against the Athletics. He had seven strikeouts and didn’t walk a batter.
The 25-year-old righthander, who allowed a combined no runs, no walks and three hits over his first two starts, employed the same fastball-first-second-and-third strategy against Oakland, mostly forgoing his curveball and
slider, Schlittler carved up the A’s over the first two innings, striking out three of the six batters he faced, before getting touched for three runs in the third.
And as was the case in his first two starts, he was heavy on the heat.
Of the 147 pitches Schlittler threw in his first two starts, 49 were four-seam fastballs, 44 were cutters and 38 were sinkers, that trio of heaters helping him strike out 15 batters over 11 2⁄3 innings (he threw 14 curveballs and two sliders).
As pitchers will say, keep going with what works until the opposition shows it can hit it. The A’s were the first team to show they could, though in truth it was in one inning.
Schlittler struck out A’s leadoff man Nick Kurtz looking at a 95-mph cutter and got Shea Langeliers looking at a 99-mph sinker. In a perfect 14-pitch first, Schlittler threw one curveball, on pitch No. 13 of the inning to Tyler Soderstrom, who flied softly to center for the third out. Schlittler threw his one and only slider during Jacob Wilson’s at-bat with one out in the second — his 23rd pitch of the night — and finished off the shortstop looking at a 98-mph sinker.
In the A’s three-run third, he threw three curveballs in a six-pitch at-bat to Soderstrom, who doubled on the third of those to make it 3-1. Of Schlittler’s 84 pitches Tuesday, just five were off-speed.
“His size matters,” manager Aaron Boone said before the game of the 6-6, 215-pound Schlittler. “He’s obviously very tall and gets that tilt, that downhill thing going. It’s really explosive with his four-seam, the sinker and the cutter.
“The cutter’s where he’s gone to another level, I think, over the winter and into spring. That pitch has become very real. So he’s got three fastballs going in three different directions.”
The cutter is a pitch Schlittler did not have in his arsenal in spring training 2025 when he first popped on the Yankees’ radar.
Schlittler experienced immediate success after getting called up in early July, mowing through the opposition far more times than not in going 4-3 with a 2.96 ERA in 14 starts, striking out 84 and walking 31 in 73 innings. But even with that success, the quietly confident Schlittler was open to suggestions on getting better.
Gerrit Cole had one such suggestion as the playoffs approached: work in the cutter.
“I went into the playoffs with that 94-96 mile-an-hour cutter,” Schlittler said in camp. “I was able to see really good results with it up in the zone.”
That’s one description. Schlittler turned in an all-time postseason performance in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series against the Red Sox, striking out 12 over eight scoreless innings in the Yankees’ 4-0 victory that elevated the pitcher’s popularity.
“He’s got ‘it,’ ” Cole said that night of Schlittler. “I don’t know what ‘it’ is. It’s hard to define it. But he’s got it.”
“Obviously, he finished last season really strong for us and obviously on a high in the playoffs,” Boone said of Schlittler. “But he got to work in the winter, too, and then through spring training on how can I keep working on little things to help me get even better?”
For now, Schlittler hasn’t needed to break out the breaking stuff, other than occasionally flashing it to put something else in the minds of hitters.
After all, if it ain’t broke . . . well, you know the rest.
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.
