Cam Schlittler didn’t just win the American League Cy Young Award on Wednesday night. He ran away with it.
The Yankees right-hander took all 30 first-place votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, a clean sweep that left Toronto Blue Jays starter Dylan Cease in second place and gave Schlittler another loud entry in his growing history with Boston. Hours after the award became official Nov. 11, Schlittler summed up the result in one word on X:
“Unanimous,” Schlittler wrote.
That single word fit the margin. Cease, who finished second for the award for the second time in his career, got no first-place votes despite a season that placed him among the league’s top starters.
The Blue Jays had spent heavily to bring him in, signing him to a seven-year, $210 million deal before the 2026 season. He rewarded them with a 2.40 ERA and 239 strikeouts in 169 innings.
Schlittler matched that strikeout total, but he did it in 24 2/3 more innings and with a better overall run prevention line. He finished 14-6 in 33 starts with a league-best 1.95 ERA and led AL pitchers with 6.2 wins above replacement, according to FanGraphs.
The voting gap was decisive. Schlittler finished with 210 points to Cease’s 110, while Cleveland’s Parker Messick came in third with 84. Cease picked up 22 second-place votes, six third-place votes and two fourth-place votes, but that still wasn’t enough to make the race close.
There was also a Boston angle baked into the result. Schlittler grew up in Walpole, Massachusetts, pitched at Northeastern and has already become a headache for Red Sox fans. He was drafted by the Yankees in the seventh round in 2022, 220th overall, and has turned that background into a rivalry storyline that keeps getting louder.
He has already delivered two postseason performances that Boston won’t forget. In Game 3 of the 2025 AL Wild Card Series, Schlittler struck out 12 Red Sox over eight scoreless innings as New York eliminated Boston. Then in the 2026 Wild Card Series, he opened Game 1 at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 29 with 6 1/3 scoreless innings, two hits allowed and 10 strikeouts as the Yankees again moved on past the Red Sox.
Before that September start, Schlittler said he had received negative messages from Red Sox supporters and that he used the criticism as fuel. His comments about keeping receipts only sharpened the edge of the rivalry.
The award vote even had another Boston wrinkle. Red Sox pitcher Sonny Gray finished fifth with 21 points, while Schlittler claimed every first-place slot. It was a strange little snapshot of an AL East race where three division rivals all showed up in the same conversation.
The historical note is a big one for New York, too. Schlittler became just the third Yankees pitcher to win the Cy Young unanimously, joining Ron Guidry in 1978 and Gerrit Cole in 2023. He is the seventh Yankees pitcher overall to win the award.
That makes the rise even more striking. Schlittler started 2025 in the minor leagues and made only 14 major league starts that season. One year later, he had the lowest qualified AL ERA of 2026 and every first-place vote in the bag.
The reaction around the award was predictably noisy, with skepticism and anger showing up in fan discussions. Some posts went after Schlittler’s attitude, while others questioned whether Cease had been overlooked. But the pitcher’s answer was as simple as it gets.
“Unanimous.”
In his televised award interview, Schlittler said his family and the Yankees staff who helped shape his development meant a great deal to him. His parents, John and Christine, were with him for the announcement.
“Obviously it’s a special moment for me and my family,” Schlittler said.
For New York, the award gives the club a homegrown rotation anchor after a season that ended in postseason disappointment. For Toronto, it leaves Cease as a runner-up ace whose contract says everything about the Blue Jays’ push to stay at the top of the division. And for Boston, it’s another reminder that the Massachusetts kid they once claimed as one of their own is now one of the Yankees’ biggest problems.
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