The 2026 Major League Baseball regular season is officially underway, and the Yankees have begun their “run it back” season without a hitch after a three-game series sweep against the Giants. The first two games, including the first MLB game of 2026, were shutouts in favor of the visiting Bombers. Max Fried continued his dominance from 2025, and so did a pitcher who joined the party late last year but certainly made an impression: Cam Schlittler.
The 6-foot-6 right-hander started 14 games for the Yankees last season and posted an ERA of 2.96 in 73 innings pitched, along with 84 strikeouts. His best performance was, as many recall, in a do-or-die American League Wild Card Series finale against the Red Sox, where he pitched eight scoreless innings and posted a dozen strikeouts to advance the Yankees into the Division Series.
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Coming into the 2026 season, the now-25-year-old Schlittler had big plans in the Yankees’ rotation, and his first start built an excellent foundation for him. Tasked with starting the second game of the season due to injury recoveries from the likes of Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón—no easy assignment for a sophomore player—he pitched 5.1 innings and allowed only one hit with eight strikeouts and came out with his first victory of the campaign.
But this win, there were two particular aspects about Schlittler and his approach that people around baseball paid attention to as the outing went on, concluded, and lingered: his cutter and fastball arsenal.
Of course, when Schlittler came on the scene, the first thing that was noticeable (outside of his physical attributes) was his high-powered fastball that can reach up to 100 mph and more. But Schlittler is unique in that he uses multiple fastball pitches, including a sinker and a cutter, along with his four-seam. Yet there were a couple of changes evident in his cutter and in his usage of those two pitches relative to last season.
First, Schlittler enters the 2026 season with a new grip on his cutter, which has helped him immensely. The numbers speak for themselves after just one outing.
Not only did we see a jump in movement on the pitch, but the overall velocity Schlittler was able to harness made it that much more lethal. A three-mph jump on a single pitch is simply ridiculous, and it paid dividends, as he threw the pitch 22 times and, outside of a fly out and a couple of foul balls, contact was hard to come by.
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But the interesting part about Schlittler’s outing wasn’t just the jump in velocity and movement from the cutter; it was the usage of his secondary fastball pitches, and how they helped lead him to success.
Last season, Schlittler’s four-seam fastball dominated his mindset on the mound. He threw the pitch 55.9 percent of the time, with his next-highest pitch being the cutter at 19.7 percent. However, in his first outing of 2026 against the Giants, the usage changed drastically. Instead of relying on his four-seam — a pitch that’s still very hard to hit — Schlittler mixed things up, throwing the four-seam and cutter the exact same number of times (22). He followed that up by throwing his sinker 23.5 percent of the time, which he threw at only 6.1 percent in the entirety of last season.
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Pitching coach Matt Blake—or someone else within the Yankees staff—seems to have pointed out that Schlittler’s fastball is his bread and butter, so why not use the three he has in his arsenal to make him even more lethal than he was before? The three pitches all move different ways but at around the same speeds, and then, if he really needs it, he can use his curveball and slider to mix things up.
It’s also worth pointing out the caveat that, yes, this is just one game of a 162-game season, and one where Schlittler is conservatively projected to pitch around 22 games and 118 innings per FanGraphs. However, if these numbers stay true—and the different profiles of these pitches stay true to what we saw in his first outing as well—Schlittler is in for one heck of a 2026, and it will be fun to watch.
Editor’s note: Now reread this entire article with “The Way” playing in the background for even more enjoyment.
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