Cam Schlittler did his part again Saturday night. The Yankees did not.
In Phoenix, Schlittler carved through Arizona for six innings, allowing three hits and one earned run while striking out six and walking three. That kind of line would usually anchor a win. Instead, New York walked away with a 5-3 loss after Pavin Smith’s two-run pinch-hit homer off Michael Fulmer in the ninth turned a tie game into the Yankees’ 11th walk-off loss of the season.
The defeat pushed the Yankees to 89-65 and left them five games behind Tampa Bay in the AL East with eight games left. New York has already clinched a playoff spot, but the division path now runs through four games against the Rays at Yankee Stadium, and it still needs help beyond that series.
Schlittler’s night only deepened the contrast between his numbers and the Yankees’ results. His ERA dropped to an AL-best 1.94, and his season line improved to 14-6 with 234 strikeouts in 190 2/3 innings. On the road, he finished with a 1.16 ERA across 17 starts.
The Yankees gave him a brief lead in the sixth after solo homers from Heliot Ramos and Austin Wells made it 3-2. But the game swung back fast.
Schlittler opened the bottom half with eight straight balls, Geraldo Perdomo reached on a bunt single, and Corbin Carroll’s sacrifice fly tied it. Earlier, Schlittler’s own fielding error on Tim Tawa’s bunt helped set up Jordan Lawlar’s two-run triple.
Juan Morillo got the win for Arizona with 1 1/3 hitless innings. Fulmer took the loss after Ildemaro Vargas won an ABS challenge for a leadoff walk in the ninth and Smith drove a cutter into the right-field seats. There was no save.
The larger pattern has become impossible to ignore. The Yankees are 20-12 in Schlittler’s 32 starts, a strange record for a club that has received one earned run or fewer from him in 24 of those outings.
His historic run prevention keeps pushing into rare air, too. Sarah Langs’ research has Schlittler with 24 starts allowing no more than one earned run, tied with Bob Gibson in 1968 and Sandy Koufax in 1966 for the second-most in the Live Ball Era.
Only Koufax’s 25 in 1963 is higher. In American League history, only Walter Johnson posted more such starts in a season, with 27 in 1913 and 26 in 1914.
His road work stands out just as sharply. Schlittler’s 1.16 road ERA trails only Johnson’s 1.06 in 1913 among AL pitchers with at least 15 road starts.
The career numbers are already in striking territory as well. Before Saturday, Schlittler had 312 strikeouts and a 2.24 ERA through his first 45 big league starts.
The historical research in the source puts him with Jose Fernández and Paul Skenes as the only pitchers to top 300 strikeouts while staying under a 2.30 ERA through that point. He now has a 2.22 career ERA with 318 strikeouts in 46 starts.
There’s also a Yankees-specific milestone still in play. Schlittler is trying to join Ron Guidry in 1978 and Spud Chandler in 1943 as the only Yankees starters in the Live Ball Era to finish a season below a 2.00 ERA.
After the game, though, he was less interested in the numbers than the standings. When asked about the five-game gap behind Tampa Bay, he didn’t sugarcoat it.
“We gotta go on a good run. It’s gonna be tough.
I think we’ve had opportunities all season to put ourselves ahead, and we haven’t done a great job with it. So there’s still a chance, but we gotta play our asses off a little bit.”
He also took the blame for the inning that unraveled his own start.
“I mean, I wouldn’t say I really gave them a chance,” Schlittler said. “That one’s kind of on me, so I’ll take the blame for that. Made an error there, let up two runs.”
Then he made sure the point landed cleanly.
“I mean, that’s baseball, but yeah, that one’s on me.”
An MLB comparison graphic before the game lined Schlittler up with Clayton Kershaw’s 2014 MVP season and Justin Verlander’s 2011 MVP season, a sign of how far his year has traveled beyond a routine Cy Young conversation. For the Yankees, the immediate question is simpler: they still have an ace pitching at a historic level, but they may be running out of games in which it can matter enough.
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