From Matthew Ritchie:
More and more over the past couple of weeks, it’s starting to feel like Yankees starter Cam Schlittler is on the verge of tossing a no-hitter each time he touches the mound.
On Tuesday night against the Rockies, it seemed like the beginning of another brilliant outing, with the right-hander sitting at 99.9 mph with his four-seamer and breezing through the top of the visitors’ lineup in 10 pitches.
When it was time for manager Aaron Boone to hand the game over to the Yankees’ bullpen, the final line for Schlittler wasn’t flawless, but it was another worthy addition to the right-hander’s case for the American League Cy Young Award. Schlittler tossed seven innings of one-run ball in New York’s 5-3 win, allowing one run or fewer for the 20th time this season, extending his franchise record and the most in the Majors this year.
There are a couple of things to note about Cam Schlittler’s new record of 20 starts allowing 1 run or fewer. The first is simply – WOW! That’s so fucking awesome! The second, though, is that the stat obviously is a bit misleading because pitchers get handled MUCH differently nowadays than they did back in the day, which makes them difficult to compare this season to those from the past. For instance, the gold standard for Yankee pitching seasons has always been Ron Guidry’s 1978 season. There have been two higher WAR seasons in Yankee history than Guidry’s 9.6, but one of them, Jack Chesbro’s 10.6, came from Chesbro starting FIFTY-ONE GAMES (so obviously, when you’re dealing with a counting stat and you start FIFTY-ONE games, and get into relief in three more, you’re going to get a lot of chances to collect WAR), and the other was Russ Ford, who set the Yankee record for WAR in a season in 1910, but Ford did so using a doctored ball that the league eventually banned (after Ford had another 7.7 WAR season in his second season). He left MLB and headed to the rival Federal League, and dominated with his scuffball, until THEY banned it, too, and he had to retire. So, truly, Guidry’s season was particularly historic, as it came in the modern MLB and without a doctored ball.
Okay, so Cam has now thrown 178 innings pitched in 30 starts. He has probably three more starts left. Guidry had 35 starts in 1978, but he threw 273 innings! Obviously, when you go 7-8 innings in every start, you’re going to give up more runs than a guy who gets pulled after 6 a lot, and almost NEVER goes 8. He was dominating tonight and he didn’t even go 8.
So Cam is amazing, and might very well outpace Gerrit Cole’s 7.4 2023 Cy Young-winning season, but let’s not get twisted about his “record” stat here.
That said, come on, Cam is fucking amazing, and it is awesome to see him do this all in just his second year in the big leagues.
Brent Headrick got teh 8th tonight, and he was great. David Bednar almost avoided having to pitch due to the Yankees (GASP) having tack on runs, but Tim Hill gave up a two-out two-run home run to the Rockies’ star slugger, Hunter Goodman, and Boone went to Bednar for a quick third out.
The Braves, annoyingly, are more interested in their series against the Phillies later this week, so they are throwing some bad pitchers in this series against the Rays, so the Rays won the first game of that series, so the Yankees gained no ground on the first place team. At least Reid Detmers pitched as well against the Red Sox as he did against the Yankees, so the Yankees are now 3 games up on the Red Sox (four in the loss column) WITH the tiebreaker.
Aaron Judge is clearly not ready for baseball, as he is way too slow on pitches, but hopefully he’ll use this time to GET ready.
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Man, the rockies sure love their high out-of-the-zone fastballs. That was the easiest scouting assignment ever
Yeah, that was truly bizarre. A real lack of scouting there.
Cams ERA+ is right now better than Guidry 1978!!! ?!
Brian spoke to that, but yes, it’s incredible.
I don’t think this is quite Guidry’s 1978, but I have high hopes that the rest of Cam’s career will blow Guidry’s away.
Guidry had 16 CGs
I missed the news yesterday that Fernando Cruz wants to try postponing TJS, and throwing on a partially torn UCL.
Love the guy and admire his desire to contribute more to this team, and respect his judgment that it’s better to try now than to rely on an age 38 comeback season; but frankly I’m not sure the Yankees should stake a postseason on a pre-injured elbow.
See also Fried, Max.
I don’t need him to come back in time to give up a go ahead home run in the playoffs. Wait till next year or get the operation.
Exactly, Bop. I feel the same way about Fried and his elbow. And even Judge and his rib.
i saw someone on social media make the case that sonny gray should be the cy – and i took that personally. oddly enough, the old cy young predictor on espn agrees.
tt has devalued wins in the formula and tweaked it a few times and sure enough this chart is far more interesting.
baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/CyYoungTracker.py
Yeah, we all know that’s more Townie whining. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was a Sonny Gray sock puppet.
If Schlittler had the run support that Gray gets, his winning % and W-L would be ridiculous.
Schlittler has the fourth-lowest run support of all qualified SP’s this year, at 3.24 runs/9IP. (the rate puts it on the same scale as ERA).
League median is 4.60 runs/9IP. Gray gets even more run support, at 4.69 runs/9IP.
https://screwball.com/mlb/starting-pitcher-run-support-in-2026
To coin a perhaps meaningless stat that I haven’t seen elsewhere – a Starter’s Pythagorean Expected Winning percentage (SPEW), based on the differential of their RS/9IP and ERA., and using the standard baseball Pythag exponent of 1.83:
Schlittler: (3.24 – 2.01) –> .705 SPEW. Pitcher’s . Actual W-L record 13-6 (.684).
Gray: (4.69 – 2.69) –> .734 SPEW. Actual W-L record 17-4 (.809).
Based on the above you’d expect Cam to be 15-6 after 21 decisions. The fact that he’s under that means maybe he’s not pitching to the score, and/or maybe the Yankees’ much higher unearned runs (71 on the year vs Boston’s 43) are undoing some of his work. Either way you might argue Cam underperforms his Pythag while Gray outperforms his. And I think that’s a very tenuous argument because Cam’s job is more than 1.4 runs/game harder.
If you give Cam the good run support that Gray gets, his Pythag becomes .825, and all of a sudden he’s 17-4 too.
Meanwhile, if you give Gray the poor run support that Cam gets, all of a sudden his Pythag becomes .584, and he’s just 12-9.
So – the only argument for Gray is that he’s pitching effectively to the score. But he absolutely has been given an easier job.
And meanwhile, Schlittler’s thrown 30 more innings yet let fewer total guys reach base, and only allowed one more home run and two more walks on the season.
So yeah. Ignore Sonny Gray and Boston. And also screw WOE and the Cashman and Boone who brought it. Score some runs for crying out loud.
Gray is having a good year but cmon – he has a higher ERA, lower K/9, lower K/bb.,.yes he has more wins, the one stat we’ve learned to correctly ignore.
The Gray thing annoys me because it’s not like he’s 2nd in this race, he’s behind Schlittler, Cease, AND Gavin Williams, so what is even the fucking point?
Judge back in RF, batting 3rd. I thought he’d DH today. Caballero at 2b
Forbes: Yankees’ Jazz Chisholm Jr Sends Phillies Message After New York Rejects Extension
Mike A CBS: one 29-homer free-agent second baseman who could replace Chisholm. This veteran slugger is Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star Brandon Lowe.
Kind of early for this.
Much more relevant Kuty: Jazz Chisholm Jr. has a sprained right thumb, is going on the IL, Boone says.”
Fuck, that’s not good. Volpe has giant voodoo dolls of all the Yankees, I guess. 7-10 days of no activity before reevaluation. Not ideal!!