ANAHEIM, Calif. — Cam Schlittler walked off the mound Wednesday having done almost everything an American League Cy Young contender could ask of himself.
The Yankees right-hander held the Angels to one run and two hits across eight innings. He struck out nine, did not issue a walk and threw 71 of his 99 pitches for strikes. The Yankees eventually won 6-3 in 10 innings, although their lack of regulation offense left Schlittler with a no-decision.
His season numbers became even harder to ignore. Schlittler is 12-6 with a 2.04 ERA, 0.94 WHIP and 210 strikeouts across 171 2/3 innings and 29 starts. He has allowed only 119 hits while establishing himself as the front-line starter of a Yankees club that improved to 80-60 and moved within 3 1/2 games of Tampa Bay in the AL East.
Yet Wednesday also supplied the remaining argument for skeptics who question whether Schlittler’s results can continue at this level.
Cy Young race gets tighter, not easier
The biggest Cy Young competitor for Schlittler is Dylan Cease.
On the same night Schlittler dominated Los Angeles, Cease threw six scoreless innings in Toronto’s 11-0 victory over Cleveland. The Blue Jays right-hander improved to 10-5 with a 2.25 ERA, 1.04 WHIP and an AL-leading 221 strikeouts across 156 1/3 innings.
Schlittler owns the advantage in ERA, WHIP and workload. He has thrown 15 1/3 more innings than Cease while allowing runs at a lower rate.
Cease owns the strikeout advantage and has remained one of baseball’s most overpowering swing-and-miss pitchers.
MLB.com’s most recent Cy Young poll nevertheless showed Schlittler firmly ahead. He received 25 of 35 first-place votes and 165 points in the Aug. 18 poll. Cease collected the other 10 first-place votes and 148 points.
September performances now carry greater weight because the gap is narrow enough for each start to move voters.
Hard contact gives Schlittler skeptics an opening
The Yankees sophomore star ended his Los Angeles outing with a Yankees record and an MLB milestone.
Still, the Angels registered eight hard-hit balls against the Yankees ace despite collecting only two hits. Vaughn Grissom produced both, including the seventh-inning home run that erased New York’s 1-0 lead.
That creates a striking contrast between the box score and the contact underneath it.
Schlittler retired 17 consecutive hitters between Grissom’s second-inning single and his seventh-inning homer. When Los Angeles put the ball in play, however, the Yankees ace was not completely untouchable.
That distinction matters in an increasingly statistical Cy Young debate.
Statcast’s season profile has shown a gap between Schlittler’s actual ERA and his expected ERA. His profile carried a 2.96 xERA, compared with his actual ERA that has now dropped to 2.04. Opponents had generated a 39.5% hard-hit rate and 7.8% barrel rate against him, both slightly above the MLB averages listed by Statcast.
But the same advanced data makes it difficult to dismiss Schlittler as simply fortunate. His expected batting average against was only .210 and his expected weighted on-base average was .268. His 30.9% strikeout rate also remained comfortably above the MLB average.
In other words, there may be some regression evidence around the margins. There is much less evidence that the Yankees ace is surviving on luck.
Aaron Boone saw Wednesday’s outing as another example of what happens when Schlittler combines premium stuff with command.
“I thought his command was really good — strike throwing was excellent again,” Boone said.
Schlittler keeps adding historical weight
The argument for Schlittler extends well beyond ERA.
Wednesday marked his 19th start allowing one run or fewer, breaking a Yankees single-season record previously shared by Ron Guidry in 1978, Whitey Ford in 1964 and Jack Chesbro in 1904.
His road work has been even more unusual. Schlittler owns a 1.14 ERA through his first 16 road starts, trailing only Bob Gibson’s 0.81 in 1968 and Claude Hendrix’s 0.94 in 1914 among pitchers since earned runs became official in 1913.
He has also produced more strikeouts than hits allowed in each of his last 21 road starts. Randy Johnson’s 23-game streak from 1999 through 2000 is the only longer run by a pitcher in the modern era.
Those are the numbers Cy Young voters will weigh against the expected-stat argument.
Schlittler does not need every hard-hit ball to find a glove for the remainder of September. He needs to keep missing bats, limiting walks and preventing damaging innings at a rate close to what he has done all season.
After five starts in which he has surrendered only four total runs, his response to the sustainability question is becoming increasingly difficult to argue with.
For the Yankees, that debate is becoming secondary.
For Cy Young voters, it may be one of the few debates Schlittler has left to settle.
Yankees Fans push back against Schlittler criticism
Yankees fans largely celebrated Cam Schlittler’s latest performance and the season he has put together. Eric (@NYGB904) called the Yankees ace “the best thing about the NY Yankees right now,” describing the right-hander as “an absolute dawg.”
Ian (@g_IANnettino) said the ace pitcher has gone far beyond what he expected entering the season. After liking what he saw from the pitcher last year, Ian said he wanted to wait for a larger sample before getting carried away, but believes Schlittler has now exceeded those expectations “by a mile.”
Ethan Nickel (@EthanNickel4) went directly to the AL Cy Young debate. He argued that Schlittler should be comfortably ahead of Dylan Cease because of his higher WAR, lower ERA, larger innings total and the Yankees’ postseason position. Nickel questioned what argument remained for choosing Cease over the Yankees ace.
Grisham’s Mustache (@GrishamsStache) pushed back at attempts to diminish Schlittler’s performance, saying fans were coming up with excuses to “devalue Cam’s season” even as the pitcher continued producing historic numbers.
Katie Sharp (@SharpStats17) highlighted the road dominance behind that excitement, noting Schlittler’s 1.14 ERA through 16 road starts.
GO DJ 2 (@GODJ2) praised both Schlittler’s results and personality, pointing to his competitiveness, his performances against the Red Sox and his willingness to back up his confidence on the mound.
Irar (@irajets420) focused on how unexpected Schlittler’s emergence has been, noting that he generated relatively little attention as a prospect before establishing himself as one of the Yankees’ most important pitchers.
@ashesofacacia mocked the continued debate around Schlittler, arguing that his success follows him whether the Yankees are at home or on the road and suggesting he has gotten inside the heads of his detractors.
@yankeesvision similarly dismissed one of the arguments being used against the Yankees right-hander, calling it “one of the weirder false narratives” surrounding Schlittler.
Taken together, the reactions show a fan base increasingly defending Schlittler against attempts to explain away his results. The disagreement is less about whether he has pitched well and more about whether his historic run should already make him the clear favorite over Cease in the AL Cy Young race.
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