Last night’s Wild Card Game 3 was one for the ages. After throwing a 7 R (6 ER) 2-⅓ inning outing in Cam Schlittler’s last appearance with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre, this was quite the outing for the former 7th rounder. Schlittler, a native of East Walpole, Mass., a Boston suburb, has had quite the ascent to pure domination throughout his career with the Yankees.
Schlittler was drafted in 2022, and made his professional debut with the Florida Complex League (FCL) Yankees on June 9, 2023. In 7 starts with FCL, he went 21-⅓ innings, allowing 7 ER on 17 H with 13 BB for an ERA of 2.95. He struggled in Low-A Tampa and High-A Hudson Valley at times in 2023, but only made 5 starts with Tampa (5.21 ERA) and 2 with Hudson Valley (4.76 ERA).
We can look back at Statcast data from his first start with Tampa and see that his four-seamer was averaging upper-80s with a max of 93 MPH, plus he mixed in a low-80s sweeper, an upper-70s curveball and an upper-80s change-up. Compare that to last night’s game, and you notice that the sweeper is gone for a sinker, and both the sinker and fastball are averaging nearly triple digits (99 MPH). He also added a low/mid-90s cutter, and got rid of the change-up. His curveball bumped down a little in speed from 87 to 84 MPH on average.
A lot of this is kudos to the Yankees player development staff, as they’ve had a lot of success developing pitchers over the years. They may not have had as much success developing hitters, but the organization is definitely deep in a lot of pitching talent. 7 of the top 10 prospects on MLB Pipeline’s Top 30 list are pitchers, with Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz and Carlos Lagrange potentially being the most exciting of the bunch. Lagrange is a flamethrower just like Schlittler is, but has had some control issues, and Rodriguez-Cruz, also known as “ERC”, has been lights out since being acquired from Boston for catcher Carlos Narváez. Both Rodriguez-Cruz and Lagrange have the potential to be a part of the Yankees rotation in 2026, if they’re not traded away in the off-season.
A pitcher that should be on your radar in the lower levels of the system is lefty Xavier Rivas. Rivas was drafted out of Ole Miss as their ace, but they signed him for cheap in the 16th round (he should have otherwise gone no worse than the 5th round) because he was coming off of Tommy John surgery. In his first two pro appearances, Rivas combined to throw 8-⅔ innings of 1 hit, 3 walk ball, including a 4-⅔ no-hit bid in his second appearance with the FCL Yankees. Rivas’ killer pitch is his low-80s slider that moves like a Wiffle Ball.
It’s an exciting time to follow the Yankees’ farm system, and an especially fun time if you’re into pitchers and advanced stats.
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