Cam Schlittler spent Monday night trying to survive the Yankees’ mistakes, then made sure nobody could mistake where he thought the blame belonged.
New York’s rookie right-hander took the ball in Game 2 of the American League Division Series with the Yankees already staring at a must-have response after a 1-0 loss in Game 1. Instead, Tampa Bay rolled to a 5-2 win and a 2-0 series lead, and Schlittler’s postgame comments turned as sharp as anything in the box score.
“I’m not disappointed in our defense. I’m not disappointed in the offense.
Really just disappointed in myself. That’s baseball, and those things are gonna happen.
But I’ve got to be able to work through those. I wasn’t able to do that today,” Schlittler said.
That was the tone all night: the Yankees made errors, Schlittler absorbed the damage, and then he refused to let anyone else carry the burden for him. New York committed four errors and had several other defensive lapses, but Schlittler kept circling back to his own outing.
“Obviously, it starts with me,” Schlittler said. “I’ll be the first one to say that I didn’t do my job, but it didn’t seem like we really showed up today.
So that’s what happens. They played really good baseball and took advantage of those opportunities.”
“We expect a lot out of each other. It’s been great all year, but we just didn’t play our brand of baseball,” Schlittler said.
Aaron Boone took the opposite tack, saying his starter kept bailing out the defense.
“He battled,” Boone said. “Obviously, [he] picked us up kind of all night.
It’s just hard to do that time after time. Too many free outs out there or free baserunners.”
Boone added, “But Cam did his job. We didn’t give him a good enough chance to really do his job.”
The game opened with a mess. Ryan McMahon committed an error on the second pitch, Jazz Chisholm Jr. made a throwing error trying to finish a double play, and Austin Wells was charged with catcher’s interference. Even so, Schlittler got through the first inning with just one unearned run, throwing 17 of 19 pitches for strikes.
But the trouble kept coming. Two miscues by rookie shortstop George Lombard Jr. helped Tampa Bay push across four runs, and Richie Palacios capped that burst with a two-run single off Brent Headrick.
Schlittler’s numbers told the same story as his words. Statcast had his whiff rate at 16%, far below the marks he posted in his three regular-season starts against Tampa Bay, when he had whiff rates of 39%, 38% and 29% and a 2.81 ERA. His fastball mix wasn’t getting the usual swing-and-miss either, with a 10% whiff rate on the four-seamer, 14% on the sinker and 11% on the cutter.
He finished with two strikeouts, matching a career low, and seven swings and misses. Of the 19 balls the Rays put in play, 11 were hard-hit. He also needed 41 pitches to get through two innings, and two of his four runs were unearned.
This was not a pitcher arriving cold. Schlittler had already shoved Tampa Bay aside on July 6 at Tropicana Field, firing eight innings of one-run ball with three hits, eight strikeouts and no walks.
That night, after hearing talk that he was slipping, he said, “They want to say there’s regression because I have one bad outing. It was personal to go out there and just have a dominant start.”
Tampa Bay knew exactly what it was up against then. First baseman Jonathan Aranda said, “When you pair that with 100 mph, and then he’s doing it consistently one through eight innings, it’s tough to square up,” Aranda said.
Schlittler had also been sharp in the wild-card opener against Boston, striking out 10 and getting 24 swings and misses over 6 1/3 scoreless innings.
But Monday was different. The Yankees’ defense kept handing him more outs to escape, and the Rays kept cashing them in. New York is now one loss from elimination, and the math is brutal: teams that have gone up 2-0 in a best-of-five have advanced 83 of 93 times.
Max Fried (5-5, 2.80 ERA) is lined up to face Nick Martinez (15-6, 3.10) in Game 3 at 8 p.m. EDT Wednesday at Yankee Stadium.
“It’s going to be a rough ride back,” Boone said. “You’ve got to find out what you’re made of. It’s gut-check time.”
The Yankees need three straight to keep going.
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