The Yankees entered a pivotal, do-or-die Game 3 against their biggest rival on Thursday night having already used their two reliable veteran starters in the series. Max Fried twirled a gem in a Game 1
pitching duel that was eventually won by otherworldly Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet, and Carlos Rodón turned in a quality start in Game 2 to help keep the season alive. It was the exact scenario fans feared in March when the team announced that Gerrit Cole would undergo Tommy John surgery, and one that resurfaced in early July, when the previously cruising Clarke Schmidt went under the knife as well. The latter’s rotation spot—and indeed, eventually the Game 3 ball—would go to Cam Schlittler.
The rookie began the year with the Double-A Somerset Patriots was tasked with keeping the season alive in the most important start of his young career. Rather than shirk from the spotlight, Schlittler responded with his best Cole impression, turning in eight jaw-dropping innings in which he struck out a dozen Red Sox and did not allow a single run. It was one of the very best postseason pitching performances in team history, and almost certainly the cream of the crop from a playoff rookie. Per MLB.com’s Sarah Langs, Schlittler broke a strikeout record shared by 1981 AL Rookie of the Year winner Dave Righetti and Hall of Famer Red Ruffing.
Schlittler was locked in from the start, pumping first-inning fastballs into the glove between 99-101 mph and keeping Boston off the board. Seven innings later, he had hardly lost a tick of velocity, as can be seen in the reel of heaters below. Schlittler’s eight innings, 12 strikeouts, and 107 pitches were all career-highs at any level.
Schlittler faced off against Connelly Early, a crafty 23-year-old southpaw who made just the third road start of his career—and the first in a real MLB park, as his other two were in West Sacramento and Tampa. Like Schlittler, he began the year in the Eastern League, and for the first three innings, the rookies traded scoreless innings as neither offense could get anything going the first time through the order. For each fastball Schlittler blew by the Red Sox, Early responded with a nasty sweeper or back-door sinker on the black to freeze a Yankee batter. Then came the fourth inning.
Cody Bellinger started the inning with a popup that found some shallow outfield grass in-between Ceddanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu for a double, then Giancarlo Stanton drew a walk. Amed Rosario drove in the first run of the game with a groundball past a diving Trevor Story, and back-to-back singles from Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Anthony Volpe plated another. Austin Wells came to the plate with the bases loaded, and after a nine-pitch at-bat roped a grounder that first baseman Nathaniel Lowe was unable to handle. Two more runs scored, and the Yankees led, 4-0. Neither team would score again for the rest of the game, so Early was hung with the loss. No, he didn’t dazzle nearly the same way as his mound rival, but his defense very much betrayed him.
The star of the night, undeniably, was Schlittler. Killa Cam dominated Boston’s lineup all night, allowing just five hits (all singles; one each to Story, Lowe, and Romy Gonzalez, and two to Masataka Yoshida). The Red Sox had two runners on base just one time in the fifth inning, and Schlittler extinguished the threat by striking out Jarren Duran to end the inning. Story led off the sixth with a hit, but Schlittler responded by inducing a groundball from Alex Bregman and striking out Yoshida and Rafaela. Had this been the end of his start, it would have been one of the most electric starts from a Yankee pitcher in recent memory.
Schlittler wasn’t done, and manager Aaron Boone kept the pedal to the metal. His already-iffy bullpen had entered Game 3 gassed, so with a four-run cushion, he was OK with pushing his rookie. Schlittler came back out for the seventh inning, retired Lowe and Carlos Narváez on just six pitches, and struck out Abreu on a belt-high fastball for his 11th punchout of the game on his 100th pitch. Still, Schlittler wasn’t quite finished. He came back out for the eighth inning to a booming ovation, struck out Gonzalez, got Duran to pop out (thanks to a miraculous, Jeterian catch by Ryan McMahon), and induced a groundball from Story to end his unforgettable outing.
One of the most impressive aspects of Schlittler’s gem was his command. He found a lot of success through his first regular season 14 starts as a big-leaguer, but if there was one thing you could point to as a potentially fatal flaw, it was his tendency to issue too many free passes. This was not a concern on Thursday: 75 of the 107 pitches Schlittler threw were strikes (70%), and he didn’t walk a single hitter. He had complete control of his three fastballs all night, and the Red Sox simply couldn’t touch them.
Schlittler has been a major victory for the Yankees’ pitching development all season, and his meteoric rise reached an unfathomable high on Thursday night as he turned in a performance for the ages. He became the first pitcher in baseball history—not just among rookies, all pitchers—to complete eight innings with no walks and 12 strikeouts in the postseason, and his performance looked just as historic as the statistics say it was. His career night led the Yankees to an ALDS appearance against the Blue Jays, and Schlittler will look to continue his ascension against one of the American League’s strongest lineups in either Game 3 or 4.
Not only is Cam Schlittler Thursday’s Player of the Game, he turned in a performance that Yankees fans will never forget.
