ST. PETERSBURG -- It was a nightmare night for the prohibitive American League Cy Young favorite. And he barely did anything wrong.
Cam Schlittler pounded the strike zone, and when he was out of the zone, it was mostly by design. His stuff was good. His velocity was right where it usually is. And yet …
The second-year right-hander was reached for six hits, four runs -- only two of them earned, more on that in a bit -- and struck out a season-low two batters as the Rays’ high-contact offense and a night of defensive mishaps led to a 5-2 New York loss in Game 2 of the American League Division Series on Monday at Tropicana Field.
Schlittler made good pitch after good pitch, and somehow Tampa Bay managed baserunner after baserunner.
“It’s what they do,” said Schlittler. “I let up runs like that in April against them, just choppers in the infield. That’s what they do. They put pressure on you, and they find a way to get those runs across.”
There’s probably a little more Schlittler could have done, but not much. He made a couple of location mistakes at the start of the four-run fifth inning that decided the game. But mostly, this game was a huge data point in the argument that there’s only so much a pitcher can control.
The Yankees were charged with four errors, three of them in the first inning, and that doesn’t even tell the whole story of the night for New York’s defense. At least two other plays that were ruled hits could have been outs.
It was a perfect, definitive Rays game on offense, and a particular hell for a great pitcher who is used to dominance. Even when Schlittler made good pitches -- and he made plenty of them -- Rays hitters got on base.
“That’s what they do,” said catcher Austin Wells. “They put the ball in play. There’s a saying, 'Put the ball in play and good things happen.' For them, it happens a lot. … That’s just their game. It’s a very low-miss team.”
The frustration started from the jump. Schlittler threw well-located fastballs, each 98 mph and below the bottom of the strike zone, to the game’s first two batters, and both got on. Yandy Díaz reached base on a Ryan McMahon error, and Jonathan Aranda singled past a diving McMahon. Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s throwing error on a potential double-play ball brought home the first Tampa Bay run.
Schlittler appeared to have struck out Liam Hicks for the second out -- which should have actually been the third -- but a catcher’s interference call on Wells instead gave Hicks first base. Another potential double-play ball went for only one out before Victor Mesa Jr. grounded out to end the inning.
“That’s baseball,” Schlittler said. “It happens. We have a great defense. They’ve been great all year. Just didn’t go our way there in the first. Luckily able to limit it to one [run]. But they continued to put pressure on us.”
Somehow, Schlittler only threw 19 pitches in the frame, and a staggering 17 of them were strikes. But he’d been worked hard. He worked around a double and a walk in the second and was over 40 pitches after two.
He worked around more trouble -- two singles, one on a pitch out of the zone and one on the black -- in the third and appeared to have found his groove in the fourth, when he recorded his only two strikeouts. But a pair of location mistakes to open the fifth set up the inning where Tampa Bay broke the game open -- once again with help from shaky Yankees infield defense -- and Schlittler was done after 4 1/3.
“He battled,” said manager Aaron Boone. “Obviously, [he] picked us up kind of all night. It's just hard to do that time after time. Too many free outs out there or free baserunners. So I thought Cam threw the ball well. They did a good job against him of putting pressure on him and putting the ball in play and started to get some really good swings off him there that last time through.
“But Cam did his job. We didn't give him a good enough chance to really do his job.”