A 1.16 ERA in 17 road starts. Read that again, because it is the number that should make every front office in baseball uncomfortable. Cam Schlittler just became the unanimous AL Cy Young winner, ESPN reported, and he was at his very best on the road, away from the ballpark where pitchers are supposed to get exposed.
The full line: 14-6, 33 starts, 1.95 ERA, 239 strikeouts in 193 2/3 innings. He led the American League in ERA, fWAR (6.2) and ERA+ (215). Dylan Cease of the Blue Jays finished second and Parker Messick of the Guardians third, behind him on every ballot.
The Yankees have spent years looking outward for the next ace. This one was already in the organization, a seventh-round pick out of Northeastern in 2022. He is 25. His fastball averaged 98 mph. Nobody had to outbid anybody.
Go back to the road split for a second. Road starts are supposed to be the hard half of a pitcher’s year. Schlittler flipped it. The 1.16 away from home sits next to a 1.95 overall, which means the road starts dragged the whole number down.
Here is the part I cannot let go of. Seven Yankees have won a Cy Young, and Schlittler joins Ron Guidry and Whitey Ford as the homegrown ones. Three of seven. The franchise built on buying stars produces its rarest kind of ace by raising him.
Only Spud Chandler (1.64 in 1943) and Guidry (1.74 in 1978) posted a lower ERA as qualified Yankee starters. That is the entire list of Yankee starters who beat him, and one of them did it in 1943.
https://x.com/Yankees/status/2120671804582727743
And he allowed one run or fewer in 21 starts. Twenty-one. Opposing lineups spent most of the year waiting for a mistake that never came.
Now the objection, and it is a fair one: this is one full season. Plenty of pitchers have had a monster year and then spent the next one trying to find it, and a 1.16 road ERA across 17 starts is the kind of number that regresses if you stare at it long enough. Fine. I will take the regression. Even a merely very good homegrown ace beats another round of shopping.
I will say it plainly, since I am insufferable about it today anyway: the 239 strikeouts and the 98 mph fastball are the headline for a lot of people, and they are not the reason this works. A pitcher who gets that much swing and miss while also keeping runs off the board is the whole package, and you cannot sign that off a list.
The lesson for everybody else is boring, and that is why they will ignore it. Draft the arm, coach the arm, give the arm 33 starts, and see what happens. The Yankees did that and got the best pitcher in the American League.
Gerrit Cole won this award in 2023. The next Yankee to win it never needed a bidding war.
