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<\/p>\nNEW YORK \u2014 Gerrit Cole has become a mentor to Cam Schlittler. At Fenway Park last week, Cole made sure to watch the end of Schlittler\u2019s bullpen, and afterward the two walked slowly back to the visitors dugout together. On days when neither is pitching, Schlittler makes sure to stay near Cole in the dugout to soak up as much knowledge as he can.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Schlittler once again leaned on Cole, this time to help him navigate the rest of an uncharacteristically rough outing. Cole suggested Schlittler should incorporate more of his curveball; otherwise, Schlittler\u2019s night might end up much worse. It was among the lessons the 25-year-old learned over four innings, his shortest start this season.<\/p>\n
In the worst of his 32 career starts, he allowed six earned runs and four home runs \u2014 both career highs \u2014 to the Detroit Tigers in a 9-3 loss that extended the Yankees\u2019 losing streak to six games.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my job to come in here and stop that bleeding,\u201d Schlittler said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t get that done. I put the team down four in the first. It\u2019s not encouraging, especially against a guy like (Tarik Skubal). It\u2019s taken a while to experience an outing like that. I just got to take what I can from it and get ready for next week.\u201d<\/p>\n
What frustrates Schlittler is he knew the scouting report better than what he showcased Tuesday. He knew that the Tigers were one of MLB\u2019s best teams at hitting fastballs. Detroit entered Tuesday as the second-best offense in terms of xwOBA, which measures contact quality.<\/p>\n
Schlittler is one of the most analytically focused players the Yankees employ, so he was annoyed that he strayed from the game plan and instead tried overpowering the Tigers with what he does best \u2014 almost exclusively throw fastballs.<\/p>\n
He also knew the Tigers particularly struggled against curveballs; they had the fourth-worst xwOBA against the pitch this season. He went from 6 percent curveball usage the first time through Detroit\u2019s order to 30 percent the second time through.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Riley Greene circles the bases after homering against Cam Schlittler. (Jim McIsaac \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Schlittler struggled to get out of the first inning, mainly because the Tigers were not missing any of his three fastballs. Of the 21 swings on his 36 pitches in the inning, they whiffed on zero of them. Kerry Carpenter, Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson all took him deep in the first. By the time Schlittler walked back to the dugout, Detroit led 4-0.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m confident he\u2019ll grow from this,\u201d Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. \u201cThis will be something that fuels him and allows him to see where he can make adjustments moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schlittler said that once Greene hit his homer, he should have adjusted to throw more curves, but he didn\u2019t. It was the latest learning experience for Schlittler, who has impressed the Yankees with his ability to self-scout.<\/p>\n
Boone said that Schlittler\u2019s self-scouting caught his attention last season. The Yankees realized the right-hander wasn\u2019t overwhelmed by the scouting, game planning and adjusting required of every major-league starter. Boone said there are times when they\u2019ll have to relay information to players and make it as simple to understand as possible, but not with Schlittler.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t give him anxiety,\u201d Boone said. \u201cYou didn\u2019t feel like you had to simplify things just to have him go out there and be comfortable. You could bring him things, and he could work on them and not be overwhelmed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schlittler\u2019s ERA rose from 1.62 to 2.08 on Tuesday. Even after his poor outing, he still leads the American League in ERA, with Tampa Bay\u2019s Drew Rasmussen second at 2.45.<\/p>\n
Some may take this as an opportunity to suggest Schlittler\u2019s arsenal doesn\u2019t work, and that he\u2019ll have to adjust as soon as his next start. He does not look at it that way. His next outing could come against the Rays next week, and Tampa is the worst-performing team in MLB against fastballs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt depends on the matchup, and I think it depends on the hitters and certain situations,\u201d Schlittler said when asked if he needs to simply throw more curves in every start. \u201cKnowing (the Tigers) like to put the fastball in the air, that\u2019s probably something I should have established early on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Yankees\u2019 ace was amped for his matchup against Skubal, who has won back-to-back AL Cy Young awards. Schlittler has pitched like the early favorite to win the award this year and to potentially start for the American League in the All-Star Game. He has bigger goals<\/a> than accomplishing both. Immediately after this start, he was already diagnosing what went wrong, so he can once again perform like the best pitcher in the league.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took me 30-plus starts to finally get my teeth kicked in,\u201d Schlittler said. \u201cThere are lessons to be learned from this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Gerrit Cole has become a mentor to Cam Schlittler. At Fenway Park last week, Cole…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,369,99],"class_list":["post-736819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}