Cam Schlittler controls contact in Yankees’ spring loss to Tigers

Aug 30, 2025; Chicago, Illinois, USA; New York Yankees starting pitcher Cam Schlittler (31) delivers a pitch against the Chicago White Sox during the first inning at Rate Field. Mandatory Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images | Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images I do grow weary of spring training games. My standing rule of baseball is that if you’re going to be a boring game, you better be short, and today’s contest against the Tigers was boring but about as long as a real matchup.

The Yankees pushed across just a single run in the Saturday matinee, going down 3-1 against Detroit. I think Cam Schlittler is ready for the games to count: As we’ve come to expect from Cam, he threw his four-seam, sinker, and cutter 78 percent of the time today, but wasn’t able to avoid much contact, striking out just a single batter in 3. 2 innings.

This is one of the fun parts of spring training — the Tigers had a lot of their Opening Day starters in the lineup, so were they able to time up Schlittler’s pitches, or was he specifically trying to control quality of contact against him? I tend to think it was more the latter, as 8 of Cam’s 11 outs came on the ground. That’s not really his style, running a 36.

4-percent groundball rate last year, five points lower than league average. I wonder if that increased use of his sinker—the second-most-common offering today—was an attempt to almost pre-adjust to MLB-caliber hitting. In short, there are going to be occasions in the regular season where you don’t have your strikeout stuff, so on those days, are you able to change things up midgame to continue getting outs?