BOSTON — Cam Schlittler grew up about 12 miles from Fenway Park. He spent many of those childhood years watching the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry from the outside.
Thursday night, Schlittler pitches inside it.
The 25-year-old Yankees right-hander will make his first career regular-season start at Fenway Park in the series finale against Boston. It is a moment that carries layers no box score can capture. And it comes at a time when Schlittler is pitching about as well as anyone in the American League.
Numbers that demand attention
Through five starts in 2026, Cam Schlittler carries a 1.95 ERA. In every one of those outings, he has gone at least five innings and struck out at least six batters. He has not allowed a single home run and has walked just four batters across 27 and two-thirds innings.
The underlying numbers push the conversation even further. His 0.86 fielding independent pitching is, by far, the best among all qualified starters in baseball. Schlittler ranks second in strikeout-to-walk rate at 31.4 percent and sits atop the FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement leaderboard for pitchers through the first weeks of the season. Opponents are hitting just .176 against him.
When the season began, Schlittler was listed at 100/1 to win the AL Cy Young Award at BetMGM Sportsbook, a number well outside the top 30 on the board. As of Wednesday, he had moved to fourth-best odds in the American League at +900, trailing only Detroit’s Tarik Skubal, Seattle’s Bryan Woo, and the Angels’ Jose Soriano. He has attracted 11 percent of the AL Cy Young handle at BetMGM, second-most of any pitcher in the league.
It is a remarkable swing for a pitcher who entered the year as a sleeper and is now forcing the industry to take Schlittler seriously as an award contender.
The hometown test at Fenway Park
Schlittler grew up in Walpole, Mass. He went to Walpole High School before pitching at Northeastern University in Boston, where he went 14-9 with a 2.67 ERA over three seasons. He knows Fenway and he knows the crowd that fills it.
He also knows what that crowd thinks of him.
During the Yankees’ AL wild-card series win over the Red Sox last October, Schlittler’s family received a flood of harassment on social media in the lead-up to his start. He pitched to a series-clinching win and then fired back in his postgame comments, escalating a feud that had fans on both sides paying attention.
Six months later, Schlittler told the New York Post over the weekend that the death threats from Boston fans have not stopped. He also acknowledged spending two to three months in Boston during the offseason, where he said interactions with fans were generally positive. Schlittler’s conclusion was that the hostility was coming mostly from people online rather than the crowd that would show up at the ballpark.
Schlittler was asked Tuesday about how he plans to handle the atmosphere Thursday, including the bullpen area at Fenway, where fans can get within shouting distance of visiting pitchers warming up.
Schlittler was direct about his approach. He does not plan to suppress the energy. He plans to use it.
“I think the goal when you’re playing a division rival is you’re going to perform at the best level,” Schlittler said. “For some guys, if the rivalry feeds them a little bit, like I think it does for me, then great. If not, it doesn’t matter.”
He addressed the fine line between using outside noise as fuel and letting it become a distraction.
“I think I handled it really well last year, before that game, just not letting it be a distraction,” Schlittler said. “Being able to feed off that when I needed to. Don’t need to go out there and overcompensate or try to do too much. At the end of the day, it’s just doing what I do best and that’s going out there and trying to dominate a lineup.”
Boone on a pitcher who feeds off the moment
Manager Aaron Boone has watched Schlittler navigate all of it this week in Boston. Asked about how his young starter handles the weight of the rivalry and the scrutiny that comes with it, Boone offered a simple summation that captured what the Yankees have seen from the beginning.
“That’s all I’ve seen,” Boone said. “He handles it quite well.”
Boone added more context on what sets Schlittler apart heading into a start where every eye in the building will be watching.
“He’s a competitive guy, and obviously somebody who walks out there with a lot of confidence,” Boone said.
That confidence is backed by a body of work that has put Schlittler among the AL’s elite pitchers less than a month into the 2026 season. Thursday night at Fenway Park, the kid from Walpole gets to find out what that looks like on the biggest stage he has seen yet.
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