Cam Schlittler Caps Off One Of The Best Yankees Starting Pitching Seasons Of All Time By Being Named The Unanimous AL Cy Young
Michael Mooney. Getty Images.No real surprise here, Cam Schlittler is your 2026 AL Cy Young. He did it unanimously too.
It's an incredible come-up for Cam who really wasn't in the Yankees rotation plans until the summer of 2025 when Clarke Schmidt needed Tommy John surgery. He was called up out of necessity, not because he was primed to be the next ace of the staff. From that point on he transformed into one of the most dominant pitchers in the game. Three fastballs that all move differently with varying speeds. To this point hitters still have no clue what to do with them, and the scary part is the off-speed stuff is still a work in progress. He's a demon.
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A 1.95 ERA and a 2.56 FIP over 193.2 IP with a league leading 215 strikeouts. It was possibly the best Yankee pitching season since Guidry.
This award is Cam's, but it's also a crowning achievement to the Yankees pitching development team. Guys like Matt Blake and Sam Briend really do their thing better than just about anyone in the sport. The Yankees have a lot backwards in their organization, but not pitching. They took this version of Cam in 2023 and turned him into a Cy Young winner. Fucking nuts.
If only they could do this more on the hitting side. Ben Rice is pretty much their only version of this in recent memory. He's great and having Rice and Schlittler under control for years to come is massive, but they need more if they're gonna get over the hump. Right now they're not close as you've seen in the recent October failures. Not sure I have confidence much is changing anytime soon.
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Very happy for Cam, but I wanna celebrate these awards weeks after winning the World Series.