NEW YORK — One swing was all the Yankees needed, and it came in the first inning. Ben Rice turned on a pitch and drove it into the seats, and in a taut, low-scoring afternoon at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, that run proved to be the game.
The Yankees beat the Mets 2-0 to take the Subway Series, a crisp answer to the 12-2 humiliation their crosstown rivals handed them a day earlier. Where Saturday was chaos, Sunday was control. New York managed just three hits and needed only two of them to matter.
Rice supplied the first. Austin Wells added a solo home run in the third for insurance. From there, the pitching took over, and the Mets never mounted a serious threat. It was the kind of tight, pitching-and-power win that decides games in October, not July.
That is what made the afternoon feel like more than a series victory. On a day the Yankees clinched nothing officially, they offered a glimpse of a formula that could carry them deep into the postseason. Two young stars, one on the mound and one in the box, showed exactly how it might look.
The setting sharpened the point. A night earlier, the Mets had bludgeoned the Yankees for six home runs in a 12-2 rout, and the Stadium had filled with rival chants. Sunday was the Yankees’ rebuttal, delivered not with a matching offensive barrage but with a single decisive swing and near-flawless pitching.
For a fan base that has watched this team lean almost entirely on Aaron Judge for two seasons, the identity of Sunday’s heroes mattered to the Yankees. Neither was Judge. Both were homegrown, both are 25 or younger, and both looked built for exactly the kind of baseball October demands. Together, they hinted at a blueprint.
A blueprint Yankees can carry into October
The template was simple and repeatable. A cold lineup needs only one big swing when the pitching is this good. Rice provided the swing. Cam Schlittler provided the pitching, and together they turned a quiet afternoon into a statement.
Schlittler was overpowering. The 25-year-old right-hander held the Mets to one hit over six scoreless innings, walking two and striking out eight on 94 pitches. He gave the Yankees exactly the kind of start a contender dreams about, leaning on a four-seam fastball that averaged 98.2 mph and drew 11 whiffs, and mixing in a curveball that generated four more.
The bullpen finished the shutout. Paul Blackburn, Brent Headrick and David Bednar combined for three scoreless innings, with Bednar closing it out. The Mets, who had bludgeoned Yankees pitching for six home runs a day earlier, managed three hits all afternoon.
The win dropped the Yankees’ magic number to clinch a playoff berth to one. More telling was how they won it, with the Yankees suffocating a dangerous lineup while asking their offense for the bare minimum. That is a postseason recipe.
Rice is becoming a bat opponents cannot overlook
Rice’s home run was his 38th of the season, leaving him two shy of 40 with 13 games to play. Only five home-grown Yankees stars had so far achieved it. They were Lou Gehrig, Charlie Keller, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Aaron Judge.
Once an afterthought in the middle of a crowded Yankees lineup, he has forced his way into it, and his timing could not be better for a team eyeing October.
His September has erased a rough stretch. Rice hit just .184 with a .641 OPS in August, a fade that raised questions about his role. He has answered with a surge, homering Sept. 4, again Friday for No. 37, and once more Sunday for No. 38, going deep in two of the three Subway Series games.
The contrast on Sunday was hard to miss. Aaron Judge, back in the middle of the order after his rib injury, went hitless. The captain will carry the lineup in October, but Rice provided the run Judge could not, a reminder that the Yankees now have more than one bat capable of deciding a game.
That depth is the point. When Judge returns to full form, a productive Rice hitting behind or ahead of him turns a top-heavy lineup into a deeper threat. For a team that spent much of the summer leaning on one man, that is a meaningful shift heading into the postseason.
Schlittler’s Cy Young case gains believers
The other half of the blueprint has award voters watching. Schlittler improved to 14-6 and lowered his ERA to 1.95, tightening his grip on the American League Cy Young Award as his first full season nears its end. His Yankees manager went a step further.
Speaking after the game, Aaron Boone floated a bigger idea, suggesting Schlittler belongs in a conversation usually reserved for hitters.
“He might be the MVP, too,” Boone said. “These are the kinds of seasons where pitchers get in that mix for MVP, too.”
The numbers give the notion teeth. Schlittler’s 6.0 fWAR ranked second among all American League players at the time of publication, and he had allowed one run or fewer in 21 of his starts. He is in position to become just the third Yankee with a sub-2.00 ERA since the stat became official, joining Ron Guidry and Spud Chandler.
Even inside the clubhouse, though, the debate had nuance. Judge, a three-time MVP, drew a firm line between the two awards when asked about his teammate.
“He’s definitely pitching like an MVP,” Judge said. “But they got a Cy Young Award for a reason: best pitcher in the game. So he’s got my vote, definitely, for the Cy Young.”
A young core hinting at what October could hold
Schlittler waved off the MVP talk as a compliment and kept his focus elsewhere. The Yankees ace has said all along that individual hardware is not the goal, and a year after announcing himself with a dazzling wild-card start against the Red Sox, he wants a bigger prize.
Sunday carried a personal edge, too. Schlittler admitted the Mets chants that filled the Stadium during Saturday’s Yankees blowout had stung, and he set out to silence them.
“It was a little frustrating yesterday just hearing all of the Mets chants,” the ace Yankees pitcher said. “I wanted to make sure I came in here today and shut that down.”
He did, with one blemish. Bo Bichette ended the sixth by drilling a 111.5-mph comebacker off Schlittler’s hamstring, though the pitcher expects to make his next start. The Yankees now head to Minnesota needing one win, or one Blue Jays loss, to punch their ticket. If October follows the script Rice and Schlittler wrote on Sunday, the rest of the league has been warned.
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