Roger Rubin: Why Yankees' Cam Schlittler's routine can be described as the calm before the storm
New York Yankees starting pitcher Cam Schlittler throws during the first inning of baseball game against the Kansas City Royals, Tuesday, May 26, 2026, in Kansas City, Mo. Credit: AP/Charlie Riedel
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – It was a little less than three hours before first pitch Tuesday night and inside the visitors clubhouse at Kaufmann Stadium, Will Warren and Ryan Weathers were admiring how the evening’s starting pitcher, rising ace Cam Schlittler, was going through his pregame preparation to face the Royals. And laughing.
The big righthander was decked out in a hoodie, sprawled across a leather recliner and dead asleep.
“We were like, ‘Look at him: he is so ready to go,’ ” Warren said. “He’s definitely one-of-a-kind. Might be sleeping on the couch, but you know what kind of a competitor he is going to be in a couple hours.
“He’ll walk to the mound and it’ll all be in like slow motion, but that that’s just him like [summoning] his killer instinct.”
Schlittler wasn’t the only one ready to go. For the first time in a while, so were the Yankees bats. Schlittler needed just 77 pitches to fire six innings of one-run ball and the Yankees’ batting order pounded out 24 hits in a 15-1 rout of the Royals.
The number of hits and runs scored were both season highs and this is the first time in franchise history that every Yankees starter had two hits.
The Yankees, who have won three straight, got two home runs from Amed Rosario (4-for-6, four RBIs) and one apiece from Cody Bellinger, Anthony Volpe, Trent Grisham and Jazz Chisholm Jr.
Kansas City’s bullpen-game strategy went awry out of the gate and by the middle of the third inning the Yankees had 12 hits and a 9-0 lead. KC used infielder Tyler Tolbert to pitch the ninth.
Maybe not so easy for a starting pitcher to keep his edge in a lopsided game with a bunch of long turns at bat for his team. Schlittler didn’t feel either helped his sharpness and yet, as Aaron Boone said, “probably not his best stuff tonight but you look up and it’s six innings of one-run ball and really efficient.”
“You can’t complain about the runs, right?” Schlittler said. “The long [innings], you kind of have to get through it.”
Schlittler improved to 7-2 with a 1.50 ERA as he allowed one run on four hits and no walks with six strikeouts. It was the seventh time in his last eight starts allowing one run or less. The lone blemish was a Bobby Witt Jr. solo homer in the third.
The Yankees’ starting rotation has been one of the best in baseball and clearly the club’s biggest strength. And it’s never really been at full strength yet with Max Fried recently going on the IL and Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole just coming back from it.
Nothing better explains the consistency of the group than the performance of Schlittler, who entered Tuesday leading the AL in ERA (1.50), opponents’ batting average (.185) and opponents’ OPS (.475).
It’s the reason he has to be top-of-mind in any conversation about an AL starter for the All-Star Game.
Boone said that Schlittler has a “rip-your-heart-out” competitiveness like many in the Yankees’ rotation, but added, “He expects to go out and not only pitch well but dominate. He has that mindset and some people want to have that mindset but don’t have the confidence to go with it. He certainly does.”
Warren, too, described Schlittler’s confidence as something that makes him unique but said he enjoys watching it most in the way he trusts his trio of fastballs — four-seamer, two-seamer and cutter — can live in the strike zone with remarkable success.
“I get excited to watch him pitch for the same reason so many do: he’s going to throw 90% fastballs and the other team knows that and they still can’t do anything with it,” Warren said. “That’s crazy and fun to watch.”
Warren said he believes watching the way Schlittler has made an impact on the Yankees was comparable to when Stephen Strasburg came up with the Nationals, “but without the hype he had being a No. 1 pick.”
“Cam was sort of hidden in the shadows and really sort of exploded in the minors,” said Warren, who is 6-1 this season. “People don’t really understand what a big jump it is to go from Triple-A to the bigs. There’s only a handful of guys that do that and dominate right away. Paul Skenes is one of those guys. Not many people just show up and can dominate.”
But that’s also one of the things that makes Schlittler impact so impressive. He already is a very different pitcher than the one who arrived in the middle of last season. He relied more on his curveball when he first arrived, but has evolved.
“His arsenal has adapted over the last 18 months, over the last 12 months, over the last six months, over the last three months,” Boone said.
“I love watching the intellect and I think our fans have a lot of reason to look forward to watching him for years,” Cody Bellinger said. “He’s already improved so much and now he’s around Max, and Gerrit and Carlos — guys who really know how to pitch — and can lend their knowledge to his game.”
“He’s already impressive now,” he added, “and I see no reason he doesn’t just get better and better.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
