NEW YORK — Cam Schlittler has been the one thing going right for the Yankees. On Tuesday night, even he came apart. The right-hander who entered as the best early-season challenger to Tarik Skubal for the American League Cy Young Award instead gave up a career-worst four home runs, and his blunt assessment afterward captured a team out of easy answers.
The Yankees lost 9-3 to the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium, a sixth straight defeat that dug their slump deeper.
Schlittler dug the early hole himself. He surrendered three home runs in the first inning, all with two outs, and could not recover from a start that turned a marquee pitching matchup into a rout.
Yet buried in his self-criticism was the reason the Yankees are not panicking about him.
The outing was so far outside Schlittler’s norm that it read as an aberration, not a decline. He still owns a 2.08 ERA. He had never allowed more than one home run in a game this season, and never three in a start in his career. For a Yankees team desperate for something to believe in, the ace’s bad night, ugly as it was, still leaves room for hope that it was a one-off.
A nightmare first inning
Schlittler retired the first two batters he faced, then everything turned. Kerry Carpenter drove a two-out fly to center, where Spencer Jones leaped at the wall and briefly had the ball in his glove before crashing into the fence. The ball squeezed out and over the wall for a home run, an attempted robbery that instead started the bleeding.
Riley Greene followed with another solo shot, back-to-back blasts that stunned the Stadium. Colt Keith singled, and then Spencer Torkelson capped a 10-pitch at-bat with a two-run homer. By the time the inning ended, Schlittler had thrown 36 pitches and trailed 4-0.
It got worse in the third, when Greene took him deep again for a two-run homer. Schlittler was pulled in the fifth after a Dillon Dingler double off the center field wall.
His final line was the worst of his young career: four innings, seven hits, six earned runs, one walk and five strikeouts over 85 pitches. The four home runs were a career high, and it was his shortest start of the season. The Tigers hammered him with 11 hard-hit balls, feasting on his fastballs.
Schlittler owns a brutal night
Schlittler did not search for excuses. He pointed to his inability to execute with two strikes, the recurring theme of the damage.
“Not good,” Schlittler said. “I got ahead a lot in the first, just didn’t execute with two strikes. For a team that likes to put the ball in the air off fastballs, I just didn’t get the job done. I just didn’t make the right pitches when it mattered.”
He was especially frustrated by the timing, digging his team a hole against an opponent as dominant as Skubal.
“It’s my job to come in here and try and stop that bleeding, and I couldn’t get that done,” Schlittler said. “So to put the team down four in the first, it’s not encouraging, especially against a guy like that.”
He broke down the Torkelson at-bat specifically, crediting the hitter while faulting his own location.
“I just didn’t pressure him away,” Schlittler said. “I was able to throw a cutter there middle-middle, and he was able to get around it. Good fight by him there, and I just didn’t put the ball where I wanted to.”
Even so, he found a sliver of progress, noting he established his curveball the second time through the order, and framed the night as a rare lesson.
“It’s taken a while to experience an outing like that,” Schlittler said. “So I just got to take what I can from it and get ready for next week.”
Why the Yankees still believe in their ace
The numbers explain the calm. Schlittler fell to 8-5 but carries a 2.08 ERA, a 0.96 WHIP and a 123-to-21 strikeout-to-walk ratio across 104 innings. Even with Tuesday’s blip, he closed June with a 3.38 ERA over six starts. It marked just the second time all season he had allowed four earned runs or more.
The home run barrage was wildly out of character. Over his first 17 starts, Schlittler had allowed six home runs total. He gave up four in this one. He had never surrendered more than one in a game all season, and the three in the first inning matched a total he had never reached in a full start before. According to ESPN Insights, he had allowed just six homers across 121 1/3 innings over his previous 20 starts, including the postseason.
Manager Aaron Boone insisted there was no mental letdown after the unlucky Jones near-catch, and he framed the night as fuel rather than a warning sign.
“If he’s not good with his location, he doesn’t usually necessarily pay like that,” Boone said, also crediting Torkelson for a long at-bat before his home run. “I’m confident that Cam will grow from this, and this will be something that fuels him and allows him to see where he can make adjustments moving forward.”
Schlittler, who has fared slightly worse against left-handed hitters this season, and both Carpenter and Greene bat lefty, will get his chance to rebound in a road matchup with the Tampa Bay Rays next week.
Bats, gloves could not cover for him
Schlittler got no help from a lineup in a historic freefall. Ben Rice homered in the first to snap an 0-for-18 skid. But the Yankees managed just four hits, and only a pair of two-out singles in the ninth kept them from becoming the first team since 1898 with three or fewer hits in five straight games. Their 16 hits over the last five games are the fewest in any five-game span in franchise history. Against starting pitching over those five losses, they are 8-for-107, a .075 average with a .264 OPS and 38 strikeouts. They have reached double-digit strikeouts in eight of their last 10 games, per the YES Network.
The defense faltered too. Disgruntled fans headed for the exits, and those who stayed booed.
“We know we have a lot of talent,” Rice said. “It’s such a long season. It just so happens that right now, it’s kind of like the whole team is going through something all at once.”
Anthony Volpe, in a 1-for-4 night, said the effort to break out has become its own trap.
“We’re all trying to have good at-bats and put stuff together, and then when you want to do it so bad, you probably press,” Volpe said. “And it feels like, as an offense, we’re pressing.”
The Yankees ace is confident the worst is behind him. Whether the rest of the team can follow is the question that has turned a rough week into a genuine crisis.
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