MILWAUKEE — The Brewers trotted out their young flamethrower Friday night, and the Yankees could not touch him.
Cam Schlittler turned the tables a night later and was just as unhittable as Jacob Misiorowski.
The only thing that really touched Schlittler was a 108.5 mph comebacker that smoked his left calf in the bottom of the first inning, but after it looked like he might have to come out of the game, he remained in it to deliver six shutout innings before the Yankees wasted it in a 4-3, 10-inning loss to the Brewers.
“Not really concerned,” said Schlittler, who still had the imprint of a ball on his left calf after the game. “Obviously he got me good. The warmup pitches weren’t too encouraging, but I was able to settle in after that.”
Schlittler limited the Brewers to just two singles while striking out six. He did not allow a base runner to reach second base all night as he lowered his ERA to a major league-best 1.35 through nine starts — four of which have been scoreless. Opponents are now hitting just .177 (34-for-192) against him.
One of those hits was William Contreras’ hard grounder right back at Schlittler in the bottom of the first.
The right-hander was in obvious pain as he tried to walk it off and was paid a visit by manager Aaron Boone and head trainer Tim Lentych. After some conversation, Schlittler got back on the mound and threw three warmup pitches — two of them coming in high, as it looked like he might be having some trouble with his landing (left) leg in his delivery.
“I kept trying to be pretty firm as far as, ‘Tell us the truth — even here and as we go,’” Boone said. “He was more mad at himself for not throwing a strike in the warmup pitches. So that’s why he kept throwing.”
Once he was cleared to stay in the game, Schlittler struck out Jake Bauers on a 98 mph fastball to end the inning, though he hobbled off the mound and went down the dugout steps toward the clubhouse.
After the top of the second, Schlittler did not immediately jog out to the mound as he usually does, and after a delay — it turned out he was still getting the calf wrapped up inside — Boone even started to go out to chat with the home plate umpire before Schlittler finally came out of the dugout.
“Doing some exercises in between innings, making sure I kept it loose and it wasn’t tightening back up,” Schlittler said.
With a pair of strikeouts in a 1-2-3 second inning, Schlittler began to quell any lingering fears that he might be hurt, though he did have a few more mishaps on the mound. In the third inning, he stumbled off the mound and fell trying to field Jackson Chourio’s comebacker behind him, then appeared to lose his landing spot and slipped out of his delivery during the next batter.
Contreras even hit another chopper right back at Schlittler in the fourth inning, though he was able to get out of the line of fire on that one.
“I let up a lot of balls up the middle,” said Schlittler, who also got hit by a comebacker on his quad in his last start. “They’re just finding me right now. Hopefully I can get a breather next week.”
