The Yankees entered this week staring down arguably their most important series of the season to this point. Four games against the first place Rays, a sweep allowing the Yankees to draw level in the standings. They had just the man they wanted on the mound for that all important first win, Cam Schlittler tasked with stopping the bleeding of the previous two weeks in the series opener.
We join Schlittler with two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Yandy Díaz standing at the plate. He’s been brilliant
to this point, holding the Rays to a run on just four hits and no walks. Richie Palacios stands on first following his one-out single, and the Yankees would love for Schlittler to complete eight innings to hand closer David Bednar a clean frame in the ninth.
Díaz is 0-for-3 off Schlittler to this point, the Yankees’ flame-throwing righty attacking him mainly with four-seamers and cutters in their first three encounters. Schlittler introduces a bit of a wrinkle, therefore, with this first-pitch sinker.
He isn’t able to execute to his spot away, sailing this pitch high for a very straightforward take from Díaz.
Despite seeing that first pitch sinker, Díaz is still likely wary of the cutter that moves away from him and is therefore is probably eliminating anything that starts on the outer half.
Schlittler is able to take advantage of this, making the correct adjustment to his release point with the sinker and back-dooring it for called strike one, Díaz giving up on the pitch pretty early during its path toward home.
Earning that called strike up and away with the sinker unlocks the rest of of the AB for Schlittler. Díaz now has to swing at anything that starts as a ball either a little above the zone or a few inches off the plate away for fear of taking another sinker for a called strike. As such, the elevated four-seamer should become that much harder for Díaz to identify and make contact with, and indeed that’s all Schlittler throws for the final four pitches of the encounter, starting with this one up and away.
This is perfect execution to the corner up and away. You can see how Díaz planned his swing path as if it is another sinker and therefore whiffs underneath this four-seamer which holds its plane rather than sinking into the hitting zone.
With the count to two strikes, Schlittler immediately goes for the inning-ending strikeout with a four-seamer thrown higher than the one he just dotted on the corner.
This is probably the worst executed pitch of this sequence, Schlittler overthrowing the four-seamer which results in the pitch sailing high. It’s an automatic take from Díaz.
Rather than risk wasting another pitch and running the count full, Schlittler draws on the muscle memory of the four-seamer he commanded to the corner two pitches ago and tries to replicate that execution.
He pretty much throws the exact same pitch as the one he got Díaz to whiff through, and Díaz waves an emergency hack at this heater to foul it off and stay alive.
With his 101st and final pitch of the outing, Schlittler climbs the ladder with a 98 mph four-seamer looking to stamp an exclamation mark on his start with a ninth strikeout.
Schlittler once again gets Díaz to chase a four-seamer out of the zone, this one in an even harder location to hit than the previous one. This pitch looks so good coming down the pipe, centrally located over the plate and high where the hitter gets a good image out of the hand. However, the ball never drops into the zone the way an average fastball might, and Díaz swings underneath and pops it out to Jazz Chisholm Jr. at second
Here’s the full sequence:
Schlittler played the role of stopper right when the Yankees needed it from their new ace, ending a string of mediocre starting pitching with eight strong innings to open this critical series on the right foot. After the start, he admitted that he was motivated by the talk of regression that followed the six runs on four home runs he surrendered to the Tigers in the start that immediately preceded this one.
“They want to say that there’s f–king regression because I have one bad outing. So it was personal to go out there and have a dominant start and put this team in the right position.”
I love to see this kind of competitive fire and the edge to prove doubters wrong, especially from a young player who has earned the confidence he has through sustained domination of big league hitters. It’s this added advantage on top of his elite stuff and command that should keep him in pole position in the AL Cy Young race as well as fuel a long career as one of the very best pitchers in the league.
