There are more games for the Yankees to play, maybe all the way out of October. It’s because on Thursday night at Yankee Stadium — in a Game 3 of a Wild Card series that felt like a lot more than that — Cam Schlittler did to somebody else what teams have been doing in big October moments to the Yankees for more than 20 years.
This was Schlittler, in a dazzling display of power and poise, doing to the Red Sox what a kid named Josh Beckett did to the Yankees in Game 6 of the 2003 World Series at the old Stadium, as dominant a beating from a starter as the Yankees had ever seen in October. This was Cliff Lee of the Rangers striking out 13 against the Yankees in Game 3 of the 2010 ALCS. A Yankee starter threw the shutout innings in a win-or-go-home game the way Dallas Keuchel did that to them in 2015.
This was the kid from Massachusetts, Schlittler, son of the Needham, Mass., Chief of Police, shoving it at another team the way Justin Verlander did in 2017, Game 6 of the ALCS for the Astros. This was Derek Lowe of the Red Sox in Game 7 of the ’04 ALCS, giving up just one hit in six innings on two days rest as the Red Sox were the ones closing the deal at the Stadium.
This time, even facing a lineup that looked a lot like one of those AL Central teams whom the Yankees have been giving playoff beatdowns to in recent years, it was the Yankees watching the kid pitch like a great Yankee on a night when next season was once again in the house. It doesn’t mean the Yankees are good enough to go all the way. But they were good enough this week.
This time the Yankees didn’t have to watch somebody else celebrate something on their field in October. For these two October nights, this Yankee team was different, and maybe even better than the one that finally made it back to the World Series last year. But they checked a big box this week, with bigger ones yet to come.
For a change, the Yankees got back up after getting knocked down in Game 1 against the Red Sox, even after leaving the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th. The Yankees didn’t beat themselves the way they did against the Dodgers last year. Instead they watched the Red Sox do that in so many big moments across Games 2 and 3.
Freddie Freeman didn’t get them this time. Neither did Jose Altuve. And when it was all on the line — and they were looking at another loss to the Red Sox — the Yankees were the ones with the biggest arm, after so many other times when the other team had the biggest arm. You know what Schlittler did on Thursday night? He gave his team the kind of game against the Red Sox that Gerrit Cole did not at Fenway Park in the Wild Card game of 2021, when an ex-Yankee named Nathan Eovaldi was a lot better than Cole was.
“No moment is too big for [Schlittler],” Aaron Judge said of Schlittler when it was over.
But then this moment wasn’t too big for all of them as they became the first team to advance under this format after losing the first game of a best-of-three Wild Card series. The Yankees, at long last, showed they could beat somebody other than the Royals or Twins or Guardians at this time of year. The Yankees have now played 11 postseason series under Aaron Boone. They were 5-5 going into this one with the Red Sox. All five series wins were against the AL Central until this week; until the Yankees showed up the way they did on Wednesday and Thursday night, facing two match points against.
Cam Schlittler was the best of them, without question, pitching a game that goes in with the best October pitching performances the Yankees have ever known, in any October. Again, though: It wasn’t just him. It was Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s sprint around the bases and Austin Wells’ at-bat against Garrett Whitlock and Fernando Cruz getting out of his own bases-loaded jam in the top of the 7th Wednesday night.
So they beat a Red Sox team that beat them nine out of 13 times in the regular season. They are in Toronto this weekend going up against a Blue Jays team that beat them eight of 13 times during the regular season, and ultimately beat them out of the AL East title.
And maybe, just maybe, the stars might be properly aligned for the Yankees because of what is happening to stars on the other team. Roman Anthony, the kid who turned everything around for the Red Sox and became their best player when Trevor Story wasn’t, never got anywhere near this Wild Card season, lost to the Sox a while ago with an oblique injury. Lucas Giolito’s sore elbow kept him from starting Game 3. Now Bo Bichette, one of the Toronto stars, is hurt. Cole absolutely was lost to the Yankees in the spring. But because these are the Yankees, they already had an ace-in-waiting with Max Fried, whom they’d signed for $218 million and eight years in the offseason. The Yankees, in so many ways, are as healthy right now as they have been at any point in the season, if you don’t count Judge’s throwing elbow.
They didn’t stay down against the Red Sox. They didn’t stay down after that miserable stretch when they looked as bad as, gasp, the Mets. It is why they have just some bad postseason history under Boone behind them, at least for now. In those 10 previous series under Boone, they fell behind by at least one game six times. Only three times did they rally to at least tie the series: Red Sox in ’18, Rays in ’20, Guardians in ’22. The one time they came back and won after falling behind was in ’22, when Cole beat the Guardians in Game 4 and the Yankees won that series two nights later.
The Yankees haven’t always stayed down in October when they’ve gone down. But they have had an awfully hard time getting back up recently until this week against the Red Sox, who had won nine of their last 10 postseason games against the Yankees going back to ’04. They got back up this week.
Schlittler — officially their hot kid — pitched the way Roger Clemens did against the Mariners in 2000, when Clemens struck out 15 and gave them just one hit. More than that, the Yankees just won games without needing home runs to do that. They really did look different for two nights in October. Now they get another chance to do it for three more weeks.
A GIANT BUMMER ABOUT MALIK, STUPIDVILLE TAKES OVER RYDER CUP & DON’T JUDGE A QB TOO SOON …
This is what it’s like to be a Giants fan:
You get to feel good about Jaxson Dart for about an hour last Sunday until Malik Nabers goes down and you know immediately he’s not going to get up until next season.
I will ask this question again about the 2025 Jets:
If you didn’t know what year it is while watching them turn the ball over and commit penalties and lose games — what year would you think it was?
Following the coverage of Mike Brown so far, it’s as if he and the Knicks didn’t just travel to Abu Dhabi, they’re honeymooning there.
Aaron Boone and the gang in the front office never should have benched Jazz Chisholm Jr. for Game 1 in the first place.
Spoiler alert — When David Stearns talks about how he plans to build the Mets “holistically” going forward, he’s not talking to Mets fans.
He can only be talking to his owner.
If the job Stearns did this season didn’t kill the Mets, put it this way:
He didn’t do very much to keep them alive.
Stearns keeps talking a lot about run prevention with a team whose pitchers specialized in win prevention.
A team, by the way, that didn’t assemble itself.
There were way too many moments when the crowd at Bethpage Black for the Ryder Cup brought to mind the immortal words of Dean Wormer in “Animal House”:
“… drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
Nobody is suggesting that all 50,000 on the grounds acted the way some of them did toward Rory McIlroy, and his wife, and some of the other European players.
They didn’t.
But if you were in that crowd and heard what the players were hearing and didn’t point out the ones from Stupidville, you were part of the problem, too.
When it was over, we should have talked about the way the Europeans played the first two days and then way the Americans nearly came all the way back on Sunday.
We should have been talking about the kid from Sleepy Hollow, Cameron Young, playing like a total star for the U.S. team.
Instead we were talking about enough of an American sports crowd making us look worse in front of the rest of the world than we already do.
Which is saying plenty these days.
The way Mac Jones and Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones are playing, maybe we shouldn’t start evaluating quarterbacks until they get to their second team.
Or third.
Or fourth.
After Game 1, Boone said he was “convicted” about taking Max Fried out when he did, and pretty sure Yankee fans felt the same way about the skipper.
WNBA players make 7% of basketball-related revenue in their league, as compared to 51% for NBA players.
It is merely a scandal in broad daylight, before the players stand up and shut the sport down.
It’s why at this point, there’s a better chance of me being WNBA commissioner next season than Cathy Engelbert.
