The Yankees finally conquered one of their personal demons last weekend, winning a series at the Rogers Centre for the first time since September 2023. Principal to their success was the performance of the pitching staff, holding their hosts to just four runs across the final two games. Cam Schlittler was the catalyst for that stretch of shutdown pitching with his seven innings of one-run ball on Saturday to nullify another dominant start against the Yankees from his opponent, Kevin Gausman.
We join Schlittler with two outs in the bottom of the fourth. The score is tied, 1-1, following a Kazuma Okamoto solo shot in the third that Jasson Domínguez canceled out with a clout of his own to lead off the following half-inning — the only hit that Gausman would give up in his seven innings of work. With Domínguez having made it a new ballgame in the top-half and having seen how untouchable Gausman was on this given day, the pressure is on Schlittler to keep putting up zeroes.
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However, he’s gotten himself into some trouble with runners on second and third with one out, Brandon Valenzuela drawing a one-out walk and advancing to third on a Yohendrick Piñango double. Schlittler then got Charles McAdoo to line out to pull within an out of escaping the jam. Schlittler could really use a strikeout, but stepping to the plate is a pesky hitter who has always been difficult to punch out in Andrés Giménez.
Schlittler’s typical M.O. against lefties is to attack early with the cutter, hoping to get to two strikes, where he can then target up and away with the four-seamer or up and in with cutters hunting the chase, whiff, and strikeout. True to form, Schlittler starts Giménez with a first pitch cutter up and in at 96 mph.
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Giménez must be hunting something either low in the zone or out over the plate, because he never looks interested in offering at this cutter up and in that catches a lot of the strike zone. It’s still a devilish pitch at 96 and command to that location, and any contact would likely saw Giménez’s bat off at the handle.
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Now that Schlittler has show Giménez an in-zone fastball with late movement down and in, he sequences the four-seamer trying to throw it out of the same tunnel as the previous pitch. If he can achieve that, it should look like a cutter that is going to break into the hitting are, only to then hold its vertical plane above the strike zone. The idea is to fool Giménez into chasing and whiffing under a pitch that looks the same as the previous one but does not break the way the hitter is expecting.
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Of course, you actually have to execute to your spot for this strategy to work. Instead, Schlittler sails this four-seamer way above the zone. It’s a classic overthrow and a completely non-competitive pitch that achieves nothing in this encounter with respect to setting up future pitches.
Perhaps Schlittler didn’t like the way that four-seamer felt coming out of the hand, because he goes right back to the cutter with the count 1-1. Giménez was passive against the first one up and in so maybe Schlittler can extract a similar result with similar execution.
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Schlittler commands this cutter to almost the same spot he hit with the first pitch of the AB except just a few inches higher. Interestingly, Giménez does swing this time at a pitch that is much harder to hit than the one he took for strike one. He has no chance of putting this pitch in play and only manages to foul it back with the handle of his bat.
With Giménez now showing a willingness to offer at the high fastball, and with the count to two strikes, all of the momentum is in Schlittler’s favor. The plan has become conveniently simplified: continue to pour in high heaters and let Giménez get himself out.
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This is a perfectly located 1-2 four-seamer. It’s close enough to the zone to extract a chase but high enough to make solid contact almost impossible. Similarly, at 99 mph and in on Giménez’s hands rather than elevated but out over the plate, the hitter has zero time to pull his hands in and somewhat miraculously gets off an emergency hack to fight the pitch off foul and stay alive.
Two fastballs elevated above the zone and two chases — Schlittler simply needs to keep climbing the ladder just one rung higher than the previous pitch and eventually Giménez will be unable to raise his swing high enough to make contact.
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Ask and you shall receive. Schlittler goes incrementally higher with this 96-mph cutter, and at last Giménez can’t adjust. Schlittler gets the swinging strikeout to strand the pair of baserunners in scoring position and hand it over to his offense with the score still knotted at one apiece.
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Here’s the full sequence:
This sequence showcased several of Schlittler’s many talents. He has a unique ability to get chases and whiffs in bunches when he throws the four-seamer or cutter above the zone, which in addition to precise command suggests to me that his pitches just don’t move how hitters are expecting them to. We also noted that Schlittler recognized how Gausman was shutting down his teammates, necessitating that the likely All-Star be extra precise with his locations whereas he might have been able to attack the zone more freely had he been pitching with the lead.
Schlittler by his own admission was not at his sharpest in this game as evidenced by a season-high four walks. Still, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that Schlittler held Toronto to just one run across seven strong innings, a feat that very few starters in today’s game are capable of producing. I sometimes find myself falling into the trap of taking Schlittler’s ability for granted that he can go this deep in the game on a day when he doesn’t have his best stuff and/or command.
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