Roman Anthony saw four fastballs before he saw anything else.
The first arrived at 100.6 mph. The next three registered 99.5, 101.0 and 100.6. Then Cam Schlittler changed the question. His fifth pitch was an 86.6 mph curveball that finished in the dirt, and Anthony swung over it for the first out.
That opening confrontation contained the story of the Yankees’ Game 1 win over Boston: the speed hitters had to respect, the change of pace they had to anticipate, and the difficulty of covering both.
Cam Schlittler struck out 10 over 6⅓ scoreless innings in the Yankees’ 9–0 victory over the Red Sox in Game 1 of the 2026 AL Wild Card Series on September 29. But the most revealing number was 32—the number of curveballs he threw. A pitch that accounted for 9.8% of his regular-season repertoire made up 27.4% of his Game 1 workload.
The adjustment gave Boston two very different problems. His four-seam fastball averaged 98.6 mph and generated 14 misses. His curveball averaged 85.8 mph, generated eight more and finished four strikeouts. Together, they accounted for 22 of his 24 misses.
A pitch-by-pitch examination of all 117 deliveries shows how that combination worked—and why an outing with so little offensive damage still required so much effort.
Source: MLB’s complete game record and Baseball Savant.
Schlittler’s Game 1 pitch mix: nearly three times as many curveballs
The defining change in Schlittler’s Game 1 arsenal was how often he reached for his curveball.
During the regular season, he threw it on approximately one pitch in 10. Against Boston, that became more than one in four. His 32 curves represented 27.4% of his workload, almost three times their regular-season share.
The increase came alongside a reduction in his cutter and sinker. Those two pitches accounted for nearly 45% of his regular-season deliveries. In Game 1, they combined for just 17.1%.
The pitch that changed Game 1
Share of all pitches. Both series use the same 0–60% scale.
The result was an attack built around a much larger difference in speed. Schlittler’s four-seamer averaged 98.6 mph; his curveball averaged 85.8. That 12.8 mph separation required hitters to account for two substantially different arrival times.
His sinker and cutter offered smaller changes of pace, averaging 98.7 and 95.1 mph respectively. They moved differently, but neither forced the same timing adjustment as the curve.
Pitch selection alone cannot establish what a hitter anticipated. It does establish that Boston encountered a different distribution of pitches from the one Schlittler had shown over the regular season.
Why the curveball worked: strikes in the zone, swings outside it
A breaking ball does not have to finish inside the strike zone to be effective. It does, however, need a reason for the hitter to consider swinging.
Schlittler’s curveball supplied that reason by doing two jobs.
Of the 32 curves he threw, Baseball Savant classified eight inside the strike zone. Boston took six of those for called strikes, missed one and put one into play. Taking the curve was no automatic escape.
The other 24 finished outside the zone. Boston swung at 14 of them—a 58.3% chase rate—and missed seven.
That is the mechanism behind the curveball’s success: it earned strikes when hitters watched and drew swings when it finished beyond the zone.
Willson Contreras’s first plate appearance offered a particularly sharp example. Schlittler opened with a 98.6 mph four-seamer for a swinging strike, followed with an 84.6 mph curve for another miss, then finished him with an 84.7 mph curve in the dirt.
Three pitches. Three swings. No contact.
Against Anthony, the curve had arrived after four consecutive fastballs. Against Contreras, Schlittler doubled up on it. The sequences show two ways to use the same weapon: introduce the speed change after establishing the fastball, or repeat the breaking ball when the hitter has yet to solve it.
Five pitches, two speeds, one strikeout
Roman Anthony · First inning. Select a pitch to highlight its recorded location.
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Fastball velocity and movement: the other half of Boston’s problem
Boston could not simply wait for Schlittler to return to the strike zone.
His four-seamer generated 14 misses in 34 non-bunt swings, a 41.2% whiff rate. Nine of those misses came on pitches Savant classified inside the zone. Even when Boston swung at a strike, contact was far from assured.
The pitch averaged 16.9 inches of induced vertical break. That measurement describes vertical movement relative to a trajectory affected by gravity alone. It does not mean the ball rose on its way to the plate; it means the pitch resisted drop.
His curveball averaged −11.3 inches by the same measure. The two pitches therefore differed by approximately 28.2 inches of induced vertical movement, as well as 12.8 mph in speed.
Those averages describe the contrasting pitches Boston had to handle. They do not mean the ball crossed the plate 28.2 inches apart, and they do not by themselves prove that the pitches followed identical early trajectories.
The distinction matters because the fastball’s vertical movement was essentially unchanged from Schlittler’s regular-season average. Its velocity increased by roughly 0.6 mph, but the larger adjustment was in the mix surrounding it.
Schlittler brought a familiar fastball—and made Boston deal with his curveball much more often.
Movement, location and swing outcomes: Baseball Savant gamefeed.
Boston’s resistance showed up in the pitch count
The Red Sox did make Schlittler work. Their resistance was visible in how long they stayed at the plate, even when those appearances ended without a baserunner.
Adley Rutschman’s first trip lasted 10 pitches. After falling behind 1–2, he worked the count full and fouled off four consecutive deliveries: a four-seamer, a curveball, a sinker and another four-seamer. He then singled off a 99.9 mph sinker.
Schlittler answered by retiring the next 13 batters. But Boston continued extending enough confrontations to push his workload upward. The Red Sox fouled off 24 pitches, plus one bunt attempt, and made him average 5.32 pitches per batter faced.
That explains an apparent contradiction in his final line: only three baserunners allowed, yet 117 pitches needed to record 19 outs.
Dominant, but expensive
Cumulative pitch count and average four-seam velocity, aligned by inning. The seventh was a partial inning.
The fifth inning was the clearest example. Ceddanne Rafaela lined out after four pitches. Nick Sogard grounded out after six. Jarren Duran worked a seven-pitch walk, and Trevor Story followed with a six-pitch flyout.
Boston produced no hits and no runs in the inning, but it consumed 23 pitches—the most Schlittler threw in any frame.
Nor did he control every plate appearance from the first delivery. Only 12 of the 22 batters he faced opened with a strike or a ball put into play. Some of his best work came after falling behind: Anthony struck out after reaching 2–0 in the third, and Andruw Monasterio did the same in the sixth.
The distinction is useful. Schlittler’s success depended on his ability to recover within counts as well as his ability to establish them.
The velocity declined. The strikeout threat remained.
Schlittler’s four-seamer averaged 99.6 mph in the first inning. By the fifth, it was averaging 97.8. It stayed near that level through the remainder of his outing.
The decline is measurable; its precise cause cannot be established from the pitch data alone. But it changes how the later innings should be understood. The pitcher finishing the sixth was working with less fastball velocity than the one who had opened the game at 101 mph.
He still found two different ways to finish hitters.
Against Monasterio, Schlittler fell behind 2–0, landed a sinker for a called strike and drew a foul with a four-seamer. He then finished the strikeout with another four-seamer at 97.9 mph.
Against Rutschman, he opened with a called strike on a cutter, mixed in three curves and a four-seamer, then returned to the cutter. Rutschman foul-tipped the 94.2 mph pitch into the catcher’s glove for strike three. It was Schlittler’s 107th delivery.
These were different solutions to the same problem: getting the final strike after the initial burst of velocity had subsided.
Schlittler returned for the seventh and retired Contreras on a lineout before Abreu singled on a full-count curveball. His night ended at 117 pitches, with New York ahead 2–0 and the inherited runner on first. Paul Blackburn induced an inning-ending double play to preserve the shutout.
Sequences and game situation: MLB game record.
When Boston made contact, it rarely hit the ball hard
Strikeouts removed 10 of Boston’s 22 plate appearances from the defense’s hands. The contact in the remaining at-bats was generally manageable.
The Red Sox put 11 balls in play against Schlittler, with an average exit velocity of 79.8 mph. Only two reached Statcast’s 95 mph hard-hit threshold. Both were groundouts: Caleb Durbin hit a sinker at 100.1 mph with a −19-degree launch angle; Nick Sogard hit a cutter at 96.3 mph with a −14-degree launch angle.
Neither became a hit, and none of Boston’s batted balls was classified as a barrel.
The four-seamer was particularly effective at limiting damage. Boston put five into play, averaging 77.3 mph off the bat, and went hitless on them. Schlittler’s hardest-used pitch therefore supplied both the largest share of his misses and five outs on contact.
There is a qualification beneath those results. The gamefeed’s individual expected batting averages add up to approximately 3.86 expected hits on the 11 balls in play, compared with two actual hits. That calculation uses rounded estimates and a small sample, but it indicates that some favorable outcomes on contact accompanied his dominance.
The performance did not require every ball in play to be harmless. Its foundation was that so many plate appearances never produced a ball in play at all.
Exit velocity and expected outcomes: Statcast contact data.
What all 117 pitches reveal
The final score widened after Schlittler left. His contribution came while the game was still close, when a walk, a misplaced fastball or one extra-base hit could have changed its direction.
Across those 117 pitches, the strongest evidence points to an effective adjustment in selection. His four-seamer was a little harder than usual. His curveball appeared far more often. Together, they forced Boston to handle a substantial difference in speed and vertical movement, while the sinker and cutter remained available for specific situations.
The opening strikeout captured that challenge in five deliveries: four fastballs near or above 100 mph, then a curveball at 86.6.
Over the next six innings, Schlittler kept changing the sequence. Boston’s difficulty making contact remained.