Cam Schlittler’s night started off badly, and it quickly got even worse.
The Yankees ace coughed up three home runs in a nightmare first inning, and another in the third, as he was ultimately charged with six earned runs and put his team in a hole against Detroit’s reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal.
The hole he dug was too deep for a team with a struggling offense, resulting in a 9-3 loss.
“It’s my job to come in here and try and stop that bleeding, and I couldn’t get that done,” Schlittler said as the Yankees slumped to a sixth consecutive defeat and nearly had a franchise record fifth straight game with three or fewer hits before a pair of ninth-inning singles spared them that infamy.
“So [to] put the team down four [runs] in the first — it’s not encouraging, especially against a guy like that [Skubal].”
Schlittler retired the first two batters he faced but saw an attempted home run robbery by Spencer Jones on Kerry Carpenter bounce off the outfielder’s glove and over the center field wall.
From there, Schlittler unraveled, even if manager Aaron Boone later insisted there was no mental letdown from the slightly unlucky start.
Homers by Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson followed despite Schlittler getting them both to two strikes, and the normally steady arm looked deflated after finally getting out of the inning.
He was taken deep again by Greene in the third inning and was finally removed from the firing line in the fifth after a double off the center field wall by Dillon Dingler.
“If he’s not good with his location, he doesn’t usually necessarily pay like that,” Boone said, as he also credited Torkelson for battling during a long at-bat prior to his bomb. “Confident that with Cam, he’ll grow from this, and this will be something that kind of fuels him and allows him to see where he can make adjustments, too, moving forward.”
The 25-year-old has admittedly fared slightly worse against lefties this season (which Carpenter and Greene both are), but this blowup was plain uncharacteristic for Schlittler, who has generally been dominant dating back to his days in college and in the minors.
That success has translated to the majors, where he still has a 2.08 ERA this year even after Tuesday’s blip.
Schlittler was unsurprisingly critical of his performance but found a positive spin — he established his curveball in his second time through the Tigers’ order.
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“It’s taken a while to experience an outing like that,” he said. “So I just got to take what I can from it and get ready for next week.”
