No one ever said pitching for the New York Yankees was fair.
Cam Schlittler wasn't just the best pitcher in the American League this year; he put up quite possibly the best pitching season in franchise history. If that sounds like recency bias, it really isn't: Schlittler's 215 ERA+ in 2026 — basically, ERA adjusted for ballpark and era, where 100 is league average — is the best ever by a Yankees starter, better than Ford and Guidry and Clemens. His K/9 is fourth behind only three different Gerrit Cole campaigns. His WHIP is second to only Russ Ford back in 1910, the height of the dead-ball era. Oh, and he did all that in his first full season in the Majors, while everybody else in New York's star-studded rotation (not to mention Aaron Judge) was spending time on the IL.
It's hard to overstate the burden he shouldered, or just how brilliant he was in shouldering it. In a just world, Schlittler's legacy would already be secure. But instead, he happens to pitch in the Bronx, which means that his watch is just beginning. With his Yankees in a 1-0 hole against the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALDS — coming off a Game 1 in which his offense nearly got no-hit by Drew Rasmussen — New York will once again ask Schlittler to be nearly perfect to keep its season alive.
If he does it one more time, he'll enter some truly rarefied air in the annals of the most storied franchise in baseball. But if he falters, you'll be shocked by just how quickly his own fan base forgets the last six months.
Fair or not, Cam Schlittler's historic 2026 season will be defined by Game 2 start
Those are the stakes that come with pitching in pinstripes. I say this as a Yankees fan myself, one who is often more than a little embarrassed by the way we treat our own. But there's so much riding on this season. While the rise of youngsters like Spencer Jones and George Lombard Jr. alongside Schlittler has the future looking pretty bright, you simply don't know how many more bites at the apple you'll have with Cole, Max Fried and Carlos Rodon healthy, not to mention the fact that Aaron Judge is only getting older and more injury-prone.
If New York can't get over the hump this year, with the AL as wide-open as it is, it'll be fair to wonder if they ever will, at least with this current core. That sounds like an acute case of third-world problems to 28 or 29 other fan bases around the league, but the tristate area is already on edge about not having won it all since 2009 (gasp, the horror). And it'll be almost impossible to get back to the Fall Classic this year if Schlittler doesn't deliver a win in Game 2 on Monday night.
Of course, the Yankees will still have two home games coming, with Fried and Rodon in some order plus Schlittle looming again in Game 5. But beating this Rays team three times in a row, especially after they just got one over on your soon-to-be Cy Young winner, will feel like a Herculean task.
All of which puts the pressure on Schlittler, who, again, has nothing left to prove to Yankees fans or the baseball world at large. He's already authored not just one but two postseason gems against the Red Sox in his young career, so it's not like he can't hack it in the biggest moments. But this fan base has a nasty habit of forgetting about most everything that doesn't result in a title. Schlittler followed up last year's Wild Card series masterclass against Boston by faltering against the Blue Jays with the season on the line. If he does it again, you can bet the narrative will start to grow.
Cam Schlittler could cement his status as the new face of the Yankees
There is a flip side to that coin, though. If Schlittler does manage to carry the Yankees to a win on Monday — and that'll probably be what it takes, given the state of this offense sans Judge and a seemingly revitalized Freddy Peralta going for Tampa — it will instantly take him into the stratosphere.
He's already a beloved Yankee, the best homegrown pitcher this franchise has seen ... well, maybe ever. (If that sounds like blasphemy, New York doesn't have nearly the track record with Hall of Fame arms as it does with Hall of Fame bats.) Elevate them here, stand tall with Judge on the shelf and the offense floundering and Cole falling short in Game 1, and there's a very real chance that it's a passing of the torch moment.
The Yankees have been Judge's team more or less since 2017, when he first broke onto the scene and led a young, scrappy group to Game 7 of the ALCS after missing the playoffs entirely the year prior. And to be clear, Schlittler has a way's to go over a number of years to reach Judge's stratospheric heights. Then again, Judge's postseason track record needs no further explication, and he isn't around right now. Schlittler has everything in front of him at just 25 years old, the kind of star that even the starriest of franchises has seldom seen. Deliver, and the world is his oyster. No pressure.
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