Looking at Cam Schlittler’s 2026 Breakout Season

While Schlittler had a lot of success, he was only throwing 91-94 MPH at this time. He had very unorthodox mechanics; just look at how he lands with that front foot and his upper body. But Schlittler overhauled his delivery and saw a significant uptick in velocity during the 2025 campaign in the Minors.

Now, compare that to 2026. Better load and land in that delivery, and a lot more velocity.

Heavy on the fastball

We noted earlier in the month that Jacob Misiorowski was, pound-for-pound, the best four-seam pitcher in baseball. At least in terms of swing-and-miss. But Schlittler was right up there, as his four-seam fastball Whiff% was third-best among pitchers who induced at least 250 swings off that pitch.

That list includes some obvious names on it, including Schlittler. The second-year pitcher was able to get his fastball up as high as 101 MPH but he was able to hold pretty steady at 97-99 MPH for much of 2026, including in the playoffs.

Schlittler loved to lean on not just that four-seam but also the sinker and cutter. For all of 2026, Schlittler used all three pitches the most, with his curveball seeing roughly 10% usage for all of the year, sans the playoffs, when that pitch saw an uptick in use.

It’s an interesting contrast from a lot of MLB pitchers. Since hitters have made it abundantly clear that sitting fastball is the go-to move, more pitchers have begun to incorporate offspeed and breaking stuff more to combat that. Schlittler didn’t, although it is much easier to do that when he has three fastballs — all of which are hard offerings with action and velocity — to play off one another.

And that strategy worked awfully when he did use his curveball. The curveball is a hard one, a pitch that sat in the mid-80s and was his best swing-and-miss pitch on paper.

What was interesting about the curveball was not so much how it moved or the velocity. But rather, how Schlittler used it in sequence with his other stuff.

Out of the 56 times Schlittler induced a whiff on it (both regular season and playoffs included), 18 of those were either off the first pitch or were preceded by a curveball. Twenty came directly off the four-seam, and 13 off the cutter. An additional four curveball whiffs were preceded by a sinker.

As expected, the plurality of those whiffs were preceded by a fastball. But, there also wasn’t a ton of predictability there, either.

Avoiding the big one

That’s important to have success.

Schlittler finished 2026 with the third-best opponents’ wOBA (.243), behind only Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Jacob Misiorowski. He was also one of two Yankees to finish in the top five in that category, alongside Max Fried (min. SP with 100+ IP).

His .75 HR/9 was among the top 15 for MLB starting pitchers.

Keeping the ball in the park is, obviously, important. That doesn’t need to be stated. But Schlittler’s overpowering stuff was an obvious reason why he was able to do that. Plus, the sequencing helped.

The new ace in New York

While Max Fried and Gerrit Cole are still very much effective MLB starters, it’s hard to consider either of them the ace of the Yankees.

That honor now goes to Schlittler.