NEW YORK — The scoreless streak is over. The intrigue, though, is only growing.
Cam Schlittler walked off the mound Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium having allowed three earned runs for the first time in the 2026 season. He had none through his first two starts. The Athletics found the cracks in the third inning and handed the Yankees’ sophomore starter his first real test of the young campaign.
New York still won. Amed Rosario’s eighth-inning blast carried the Yankees past the A’s 5-3. But while the bullpen and the offense cleaned up the mess, a more compelling subplot was unfolding in the box score and in the pitch data.
Schlittler threw 84 pitches Tuesday. Just five were off-speed.
Three fastballs, one plan — and it’s still working
In his first two starts of 2026, Schlittler threw 147 pitches. Of those, 49 were four-seam fastballs, 44 were cutters and 38 were sinkers. He mixed in 14 curveballs and exactly two sliders. He struck out 15 batters over 11.2 innings, issued zero walks and allowed three total hits.
Tuesday was no different in approach, even if the result dipped slightly. Schlittler carved through Oakland’s lineup in the first two innings. He struck out leadoff man Nick Kurtz on a 95-mph cutter and got Shea Langeliers looking at a 99-mph sinker. He handled Jacob Wilson in the second with a 98-mph sinker. In 23 pitches over two frames, he was nearly untouchable.
The third inning changed things. Tyler Soderstrom doubled on a curveball, and the Athletics pushed across three runs — the first Schlittler has permitted in 2026. He finished with five innings pitched, seven strikeouts, zero walks and three earned runs.
Manager Aaron Boone has watched this process up close. Before the game, he framed what makes Schlittler’s arsenal so difficult to deal with.
“His size matters,” Boone said of the 6-foot-6, 215-pound right-hander. “He’s obviously very tall and gets that tilt, that downhill thing going. It’s really explosive with his four-seam, the sinker and the cutter.”
“The cutter’s where he’s gone to another level, I think, over the winter and into spring,” Boone added. “That pitch has become very real. So he’s got three fastballs going in three different directions.”
Cole’s winter suggestion is paying off in a big way
The cutter Boone is talking about did not exist in Schlittler’s arsenal in spring training 2025. It was Gerrit Cole — rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and serving as an informal pitching mentor — who planted the seed during the 2025 playoff run.
“I went into the playoffs with that 94-96 mile-an-hour cutter,” Schlittler said during spring training. “I was able to see really good results with it up in the zone.”
That understated description doesn’t do it justice. Schlittler’s cutter in 2026 is a measurably different pitch from last season’s version. According to pitch tracking data cited by analyst Lance Brozdowski, the 2025 cutter sat at 92 mph with 4.8 inches of induced vertical break and 7.4 inches of glove-side break. The 2026 version sits at 95 mph with 12.5 inches of induced vertical break and 5 inches of glove-side break. The movement profile now draws comparisons to Corbin Burnes’ cutter in his peak 2022-2023 seasons.
The scary part is that Schlittler has accomplished all of this while barely using his breaking ball.
The off-speed arsenal is the next frontier
ESPN analyst Buster Olney drew attention to Schlittler’s numbers before Tuesday’s start, saying the Yankees starter could already be a top-10 pitcher in baseball after allowing just three hits in 11.2 scoreless innings to open the season.
What makes that assessment significant is the context. Schlittler has done it all without leaning heavily on his curveball or slider. His breaking stuff is a weapon in waiting.
Cole confirmed as much during Game 3 of last October’s Wild Card Series, when Schlittler struck out 12 Boston Red Sox batters over eight scoreless innings — the first time in MLB postseason history a pitcher recorded 8-plus scoreless innings, 12-plus strikeouts and zero walks in the same outing.
“He’s got ‘it,'” Cole said that night. “I don’t know what ‘it’ is. It’s hard to define it. But he’s got it.”
That performance was the launching pad. Schlittler went 4-3 with a 2.96 ERA in 14 regular-season starts as a rookie in 2025, striking out 84 batters over 73 innings after being called up from Double-A Somerset in July. He spent the winter refining the cutter and sharpening his command. Then he reported to spring training and struck out 11 batters in 9.2 innings.
Now he’s throwing harder, moving the ball in more directions, and — as Boone noted — he hasn’t even been forced to fully unleash the curveball yet.
What Tuesday actually revealed about Schlittler
Tuesday’s outing did two things at once. It snapped a streak that could not last forever and reminded everyone that Schlittler is 25 years old and in his first full season at the major-league level. The Athletics solved him for one inning.
It also confirmed something more interesting. Schlittler is holding back. He’s winning games in 2026 with the same fastball-first philosophy that carried him through 14 starts last year, but the cutter is sharper and his command is tighter. He has not walked a batter through three starts in 2026.
Boone alluded to this after Schlittler’s dominant early-season starts. He pointed to what’s coming.
“Obviously, he finished last season really strong for us,” Boone said. “But he got to work in the winter, too, and then through spring training on how can I keep working on little things to help me get even better?”
The Yankees’ rotation is already operating without Cole and Carlos Rodon, both sidelined by injury. Schlittler has carried the staff without leaning on his full repertoire. When those veterans return — Cole is expected to rejoin the team as early as late May — the Yankees’ rotation could have a depth that few teams in baseball can match.
For now, the scoreless streak is gone. What remains is a 25-year-old pitcher throwing three different fastballs in three different directions, an evolving cutter he hasn’t fully weaponized yet, and a curveball waiting in reserve.
Three runs in five innings against Oakland. If that’s the worst-case version of Cam Schlittler in 2026, the rest of the American League has a real problem.
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