Holy Schlittler! Rookie Righty Dominates Red Sox as Yankees Advance to ALDS

NEW YORK — In just the second winner-take-all postseason matchup started by two rookies — in one of the sport’s most storied rivalries, no less — 24-year-old Yankees righty Cam Schlittler utterly dominated the Red Sox lineup on Thursday, striking out 12 without a walk while scattering just five hits over eight scoreless innings. His opposite number, 23-year-old lefty Connelly Early, matched Schlittler zero for zero through the first three frames, making up with deception what he lacked in velocity, at least relative to the New York starter. Alas, a mistake by the Red Sox defense opened the door to trouble in the fourth inning, as five of the first six Yankees reached base en route to a 4-0 lead. Boston manager Alex Cora, who pulled starter Brayan Bello after 28 pitches in Game 2, left Early to throw 33 pitches in the fourth inning alone. That outburst was more than enough, as the Yankees eliminated the Red Sox from the postseason for the first time since 2003, when current manager Aaron Boone hit a walk-off home run off Tim Wakefield.

This was the sixth time the two AL East rivals squared off in the postseason, with the Red Sox riding a series winning streak that included the 2004 American League Championship Series, the 2018 AL Division Series, and the 2021 AL Wild Card Game. The only other time two rookie starters met in a winner-take-all game was in Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS, when the Dodgers’ Dustin May and the Braves’ Ian Anderson went head to head, though May pitched just one inning and Anderson three, and neither figured in the decision.

The two starters in this one began the season in Double-A, and didn’t figure to contribute substantially this season. Schlittler joined a banged-up Yankees rotation on July 9 and pitched brilliantly during the second half, overpowering batters with a four-seam fastball that averaged 98.0 mph as well as an effective cutter. He posted a 2.96 ERA and 3.74 FIP with a 27.6% strikeout rate in 14 starts, and was an easy choice for Boone to start Game 3 following Max Fried and Carlos Rodón. By contrast, Early only debuted on September 9, and pitched brilliantly (2.33 ERA, 0.91 FIP) but might not have made the postseason roster — or at least would not have started — had Lucas Giolito not been sidelined by elbow trouble. While Garrett Crochet’s 7 2/3 innings in Game 1 required Cora to use only closer Aroldis Chapman in relief, the manager didn’t like what he saw from Bello in Game 2 and pulled him with one out in the third, leaving him to call upon six relievers, one of whom (Garrett Whitlock) threw a season-high 47 pitches and gave up the winning run.

On Thursday, Early looked very good… early. He needed just eight pitches to work through a clean first inning, stranded Giancarlo Stanton after a 114.5-mph leadoff double in the second, and struck out five of the 11 hitters he faced through three innings, with five whiffs and a 37.8% CSW (called strike and whiff rate). That said, while he did a good job of mixing in six different pitches — a four-seamer that averaged 94.1 mph, plus a sinker, sweeper, changeup, curve, and slider — the Yankees did make him work harder after the first; he threw 23 pitches in the second inning and 14 in the third.

Early’s troubles began when Cody Bellinger, leading off the fourth, blooped a shallow fly ball into right center, where center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela and right fielder Wilyer Abreu — each among the best at his respective position by the metrics this year — both converged along with second baseman Romy Gonzalez. The ball glanced off the webbing of Rafaela’s glove, and by the time Gonzalez recovered to throw to second, Bellinger was safe. Stanton then worked a seven-pitch walk, prompting a visit from pitching coach Andrew Bailey. Early struck out Ben Rice swinging at a sweeper on the lower outside black, but Amed Rosario, drawing a start against a lefty for the second time in the series, hit a 108.2-mph sizzler just to the right of a diving Trevor Story, and Bellinger beat the throw home, giving the Yankees a 1-0 lead. Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Anthony Volpe followed with singles off 94-ish fastballs in the upper third of the strike zone, the latter bringing home Stanton.

By this point, righty Justin Slaten was warming up, but Cora stuck with his starter. Eight pitches into Austin Wells’ at-bat, he swung and appeared to make contact with the glove of catcher Carlos Narváez. Home plate umpire Mark Ripperger ruled catchers interference, apparently forcing in a run, but the call was overturned upon review. With a full count, Wells — who drove in the game-winning run on Wednesday night — hit a 100.3-mph smash toward first base. The ball deflected off Nathaniel Lowe’s glove and eluded Gonzalez, with both Rosario and Chisholm scoring. The play was ruled an error, and it gave the Yankees a 4-0 lead. Early stayed in to retire lefty Trent Grisham on a fly ball, then Slaten replaced him and induced Aaron Judge to ground out.

Cora refused to hang the blame on his rookie starter. “We didn’t play defense. The popup drops, there’s a double, and there’s a walk, and they didn’t hit the ball hard, but they found holes. It just happened fast,” said the manager. Regarding Early, he added, “The kid did a good job. He threw the ball well, induced them to weak contact, but it didn’t happen for us tonight… just a few balls that went by, right? The Rosario and Volpe [balls], but he made pitches. And he didn’t get rattled.”

By the numbers, Cora overstated the case for Early, as the Yankees averaged a 94.7-mph exit velocity on the 12 balls they put into play against him, five of which were hard-hit — four of the six hits he allowed plus the Wells grounder. Still, that was secondary to the job Schlittler did of carving up the Red Sox. “We needed to be perfect tonight, because he was perfect,” said Cora. “The stuff is outstanding. He was under control. That was electric.”

Indeed. Schlittler came out of the gate throwing absolute gas. His first two pitches to leadoff hitter Jarren Duran produced swinging strikes on 98.7- and 99.7-mph four-seam fastballs on the inner third of the plate. Duran fouled off his third, a 100.5-mph sinker, and took his fourth, a high 100.5-mph four-seamer, for a ball. He lined out to Chisholm on Schlittler’s sixth pitch, then Story popped out to Rice, and Alex Bregman struck out looking at a high 100.1-mph fastball after Rice dropped a foul popup. Of Schlittler’s 14 first-inning pitches, six were 100 mph or higher and 10 were 98.7 or higher.

Schlittler apparently had a bit of extra motivation. A native of Walpole, Massachusetts, he pitched for Boston-based Northeastern University, and was chosen in the seventh round of the 2022 draft, one pick after the Red Sox drafted Caleb Bolden, who put up a 5.78 ERA at Double-A Portland this year.

“It was personal for me,” said Schlittler during the celebration in the Yankees clubhouse. “People from Boston had a lot to say before the game, I didn’t like some of the things they were saying today… There was a line, and I think they crossed it a little bit. I’m a competitor. I’m going to go out there and make sure I shut them down.

“Boston fans, that’s just how it is,” he continued. “We’re aggressive back home, and we’re going to try and get under people’s skin. They just picked the wrong guy to do it to. It’s the wrong team to do it to, as well.”

Though he struck out both Rafaela (foul tip on a 98.8-mph sinker) and Lowe (looking at a 100.7-mph sinker) following a leadoff single by Masataka Yoshida to start the second, Schlittler threw 23 pitches in the inning, but he grew more efficient, needing just 12 pitches to complete the third (which featured strikeouts of Gonzalez and Duran) and 10 to complete the fourth, working around a two-out single by Yoshida. Staked to the lead, he labored for 20 pitches in the fifth, the only time the Red Sox put two men on base at the same time or got a runner to second; Lowe singled, and after strikeouts of Narváez and Abreu, Gonzalez singled as well, but Duran went down on just three pitches, the last of them a checked swing on a 99.9-mph four-seamer that was off the plate inside.

After that, the real question was how long Boone would stick with Schlittler. Fernando Cruz, who pitched in Games 1 and 2, was warming up in both the sixth and seventh, and Devin Williams in the eighth, but Schlittler just kept pounding the strike zone, with Story’s single to lead off the sixth the only baserunner he allowed over his final three innings.

“I didn’t even want to talk to him much,” said Boone. “I just wanted to say, You good? Usually I will come down the steps if I am going to have a conversation or take him out. I kind of stood on the steps and just gave him my, ‘Are you good? [look].’ He was.”

Schlittler ended up throwing 107 pitches (a professional career high), 75 for strikes, including 21 called strikes and 18 whiffs (36.4% CSW). Eleven of those whiffs were with the four-seamer (which averaged 98.9 mph, 0.9 above his season average), five on the sinker (which averaged 99 mph, 1.5 mph above his season average), and two via the cutter. The Red Sox averaged an exit velocity of just 84.3 mph on the 17 balls they put into play against him, only five of which were hard-hit balls of 95 mph or higher.

Schlittler had never pitched eight innings in a professional game. “In the minors, they are really good about managing workload, and you kind of hover around that 95-pitch mark,” he said. His longest major league outing by innings was his seven-inning start against the Orioles last Saturday, while his highest pitch count was 100 (in six-plus innings) against the White Sox on August 30.

“I thought I was done after the seventh,” he said. “So for [Boone] to give me the confidence to go back there and get out the eighth was a great feeling.”

Schlittler actually made some history. According to MLB.com’s Sarah Langs, he’s the first pitcher to throw eight or more scoreless innings with 12 or more strikeouts and no walks in a postseason game. And according to our own Matt Martell, he’s the seventh rookie to strike out at least 10 in a postseason start:

“When you throw 100 and command the baseball and can land your secondary pitches, you can be a problem for the opposition,” said Boone, in perhaps the night’s biggest understatement.

For the series, Yankees starters combined to allow just three runs in 20 1/3 innings, helping to paper over a suspect bullpen that put up a 4.74 ERA from August 1 on, after general manager Brian Cashman traded for closer David Bednar (who worked around a leadoff walk of Bregman in a scoreless ninth, in his third appearance in as many nights), and righties Camilo Doval and Jake Bird. The Yankees became the first out of 16 teams to win a best-of-three Wild Card Series after losing the first game since the 12-team format was put into place in 2022. They’ll now head to Toronto to play another divisional foe, the Blue Jays, in the best-of-five AL Division Series, which begins on Saturday.

As Boone put it, “The boys answered the bell and played great baseball these couple days.”