This was a long, ugly game that kind of confirmed all our priors about the 2026 Yankees. The starting rotation is dynamite but if a guy has an off day, the offense isn’t really deep enough to pick him up, they rely a little too much on one guy. The bullpen shows signs of something special — Camilo Doval throws 103?? — but the sum is less than the whole of the parts. On the whole, the Yankees failed to capture their third straight win, downed by the Guardians 9-4.
Y’know what’s compelling about August
17, 2003?
That was the worst start of Roy Halladay’s season, by Game Score. Three innings, 20 batters faced, 11 of them reached base. Seven men total crossed the plate. He was 26 years old. He would go on to win the American League Cy Young Award that year.
Cam Schlittler is 25 and just had the worst start of his career. I am not saying that he will win the AL Cy Young, more that this kinda stuff happens to everyone. A bad play by Amed Rosario arguably doomed him to that worst start, but there was plenty of mess that he was responsible for as well. He didn’t walk anyone largely because nobody had to hang around at the plate long enough to walk — eight hard-hit balls and a very unfortunate HBP took care of the traffic for him.
His cutter and sinker were pretty in line with seasonal averages, but what is worrying is that four seam was a full mile per hour slower than his baseline. We had a similar story last week in Kansas City, where the breaking fastballs were pretty ok, but the four seam was also down. I don’t know if Cam is fatigued or there’s a sore spot somewhere, but I can’t imagine this is intentional. We’re seeing all over baseball the value of starting pitchers just chucking 4SFBs by guys, Cam wouldn’t be taking velo off at this point in the season.
He was also stung by a two-run home run in the fourth inning, and he has done an exceptional job keeping the ball in the park this year. Sometimes that just happens, sometimes, inexplicably, Patrick Bailey hits a triple off you. It was a mix of bad stuff and “that’s baseball, Suzyn”, so as long as his health is as close to 100 percent as possible, you take the bad outing on the chin and look ahead to the next start.
Offensively, we continue to be thankful for the existence of Paul Goldschmidt:
That Cam has been so dependable, and Will Warren did such a masterful job shutting down the As after Sunday’s big inning, definitely made it feel like Goldy’s effort was a little “wasted” early, since Schlittler for once couldn’t maintain a lead.
And that was the Yankee offense. Thank you for paying attention to this update.
I want to take a moment and give a little praise to a player that I don’t give a lot to, and that’s Anthony Volpe. He’s gone cold after a really good start to his season, but he made a hell of a defensive play in the seventh:
As I’ve stated above this was a crummy game to watch so instead enjoy the parallels to perhaps my favorite defensive play of all time, and certainly one of my favorite calls:
Anthony Volpe is not 20 year old Manny Machado, but a hell of a job done there regardless.
It turns out Camilo Doval does throw 103, and after loading the bases with nobody out flashed that velo in striking out back-to-back batters. Unfortunately, with two strikes on him, Travis Bazzana started his swing super early and landed a double in right field, enough to clear the bases and put Cleveland up by five. Doval has stuff that makes your eyes pop, but man I wish someone on in that bullpen could strike out like, 30 percent of batters faced. There’s no replacement for a whiff, no matter how soft the contact is.
In May it felt like the Yankees alternated good weeks and bad weeks. They just had a very good week with the walkoff over the Rays, a sweep of the Royals and taking two out of three in Sacremento. This was a bad night, but a bad night can turn into a good week if you’re able to get back on the horse the next day. Gerrit Cole has yet to allow an earned run in 2026, and he will be tasked with getting the Yankees right back on that horse tomorrow. Game two of this series comes at 7:05pm Eastern, and it’s the weekly Amazon Prime affair.
