NEW YORK — Cam Schlittler walked off the Yankee Stadium mound Friday night to a standing ovation, and the box score barely hinted at what the young Yankees right-hander had just done to the Cincinnati Reds.
The 25-year-old Yankees starter carved through six scoreless innings, allowed only four hits and struck out a career-high 13 batters without issuing a single walk. He needed only 96 pitches to do it, 66 of them for strikes.
By the time Schlittler left the mound, he had quietly rewritten pieces of Yankees pitching history and put his name next to two marks no pitcher in the sport had ever reached at the same time.
Schlittler reached double-digit strikeouts for the first time in a Yankees regular-season start. His previous career high had been nine. He struck out the side twice and racked up 10 strikeouts before the fourth inning was even finished.
“He kind of came as advertised,” Reds manager Terry Francona said. “It’s 90s and it’s a fastball that’s not straight. One’s cutting, one’s sinking, one’s at the top of the zone. It’s pretty impressive.”
Youngest Yankee to reach 13 strikeouts since 1964
At 25 years and 134 days old, Schlittler became the youngest Yankees pitcher to record 13 strikeouts since Al Downing, who was 22 years and 359 days old when he fanned 13 against the Chicago White Sox on June 21, 1964.
Schlittler also became the youngest Yankee to ever post 13 strikeouts in a game without walking a batter, a distinction Downing’s outing did not carry.
The Reds entered Friday hitting just .194 with a .305 slugging percentage against pitches thrown 95 mph or faster, one of the worst marks in baseball. Schlittler made sure that trend held. He threw first-pitch strikes to 15 of the 23 hitters he faced, then worked heavily off his sinker, nearly doubling its usage to 43 percent of his pitches compared with his season average near 19 percent, mixed with a four-seamer that averaged 97.9 mph.
He got his 10th Yankees strikeout of the night when Eugenio Suarez swung through a 99.1 mph sinker to end the fourth inning. In the fifth, he froze Matt McLain looking at a 100 mph fastball. His 13th and final punchout came against JJ Bleday on a 98 mph heater in the sixth, the pitch that sent him off the mound to a standing ovation after stranding two runners. The Yankees win 5-0.
Schlittler is in the middle of a breakout season that has Yankees fans dreaming about October, and he is aware of the chatter building around an All-Star nod.
“I think I’ve made a good case for it,” Schlittler said, before adding the recognition is not something he is chasing right now. “It’s not really a concern right now,” he said.
ERA marks not seen since the Whitey Ford era
The night pushed Schlittler’s ERA to 1.71, the lowest by a Yankees starter through his first 16 outings of a season since Whitey Ford posted 1.47 in 1964. Among all qualified major league starters, only Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski sits lower, at 1.45 entering Friday.
Zoom out to his full career, and the numbers get even more remarkable. Schlittler’s 2.25 ERA across his first 30 career appearances, all starts, is the lowest such mark by any pitcher in Yankees history.
It also ranks as the third-lowest ERA by any major league pitcher since 1913, trailing only Jose Fernandez at 2.09 and Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes at 2.15.
“We can all say he’s probably been the best, one of the best pitchers in the sport,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone told. “There’s all kinds of things that go into that and that’s a few weeks away. We’ll see. He’s definitely, I think you can make the case he’s been the best pitcher in the American League so far.”
Joining an exclusive Yankees strikeout club
Schlittler is now one of just 10 Yankees pitchers to record at least 13 strikeouts with zero walks in a single game, joining Masahiro Tanaka, Gerrit Cole, Mike Mussina, Michael Pineda, John Candelaria, Roger Clemens, Joe Cowley, Michael King and David Wells.
He also became the sixth Yankees pitcher in the divisional era, dating to 1969, to record 10 strikeouts within the first four innings of a game, and the first of those six to do it without a single walk through that stretch.
A milestone no pitcher has matched
There is a postseason layer to this, too. Schlittler struck out 12 Boston Red Sox hitters without a walk across eight innings in the deciding Game 3 of last year’s American League Wild Card Series, the outing that first put the young Yankee on the national radar.
Combine that with Friday’s effort, and Schlittler stands alone as the only pitcher in major league history with a scoreless start of at least 12 strikeouts and zero walks in both the regular season and the postseason.
Across his last 16 Yankees starts, Schlittler has held opponents to one earned run or fewer in all but four outings. His lone rough patch came June 2 against Cleveland, when he allowed a season-high four runs.
Otherwise he has been close to untouchable, and Friday’s performance pushed his season strikeout total to 109, one behind Toronto’s Dylan Cease for the American League lead.
A breakout season takes shape
Schlittler also leads all American League starters in ERA, WAR and innings pitched, and sits among the league leaders in strikeout rate.
Among all qualified major league starters this season, he ranks second in ERA, second in FIP at 2.11, third in fWAR at 3.6, fifth in walks per nine innings and fourth in WHIP at 0.89.
His 8-3 record includes just 18 walks allowed all season, a number that stands in stark contrast to his strikeout total and underscores the command he has shown since the Yankees called him up from Triple-A last July.
For a Yankees rotation that has weathered injuries and inconsistency in recent seasons, Schlittler’s emergence has become one of the defining storylines of the 2026 campaign in the Bronx.
Knicks’ champion Josh Hart hyped it: “Schlitty is the Cy Young winner hands down.”
What do you think? Leave your comment below.
