TAMPA \u2014 Cam Schlittler thinks previous incarnations of him \u201csucked.\u201d Really, that is his assessment.<\/p>\n
The draft-eligible junior at Northeastern in 2022? \u201cThat guy sucks.\u201d The Opening Day starter for the Double-A Somerset Patriots in 2025? \u201cThat guy sucked.\u201d The righty called up to make his major league debut last July 9? \u201cI\u2019m just a completely different pitcher from that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schlittler has harsh reviews of his past self, even as he blossoms into a potential ace. Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake noted the transformation. Blake said Schlittler went from \u201ca common college right-hander\u201d when drafted in 2022, to someone who \u201chas a chance to help us down the road\u201d after a velocity uptick last spring. Now, Blake says, \u201cThis guy has kind of turned into a monster.\u201d<\/p>\n
In four decades doing this I have seen meteors shoot from off-camera to star, but rarely as fast and northward as Schlittler. Just in the past 12 months, he has navigated from the anonymity of the cattle call of pitchers invited to spring \u2014 No. 76 in your program if you remember that \u2014 to being as essential as anyone to saving the Yankee season both late in the 2025 schedule and in the wild-card round to now a central part of a potential stuff-heavy, high-end rotation that stands as the most optimistic reason to believe a first championship since 2009 is possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA \u2014 Cam Schlittler thinks previous incarnations of him \u201csucked.\u201d Really, that is his assessment. The draft-eligible junior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2376],"tags":[5,20455,4,1690,62,2548,2547,185,430,428,151,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-625532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-yankees","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cam-schlittler","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-yankees","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkyankees","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-sports-columnists","17":"tag-sports-plus","18":"tag-spring-training","19":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116235572057127718","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}