Cam Schlittler’s velocity held, but the Rays kept making contact

Jonathan Aranda had already missed a cutter when Cam Schlittler reached two strikes in the fifth inning. The next pitch was a 98.0 mph four-seam fastball. Aranda drove it to right field at 109.4 mph for a single. Junior Caminero followed with a first-pitch double off a 96.5 mph sinker, putting runners at second and third before Schlittler recorded an out.

Those consecutive hits explain more about Schlittler's October 5 start than the Yankees' defensive mistakes alone. Tampa Bay won ALDS Game 2, 5-2, at Tropicana Field. Schlittler allowed four runs, two earned, on six hits over 4 1/3 innings, with one walk and two strikeouts. One runner charged to him scored after he left.

Schlittler's four-seamer averaged 98.2 mph, compared with 98.6 in his September 29 Wild Card start against Boston and 98.0 over his regular season. Tampa Bay missed seven times in 44 swings, a 15.9% rate. Boston had missed 24 times in 60 swings, or 40.0%. Different opponents and a smaller sample matter, but the contrast is substantial.

The fastball was still there

Schlittler's previous postseason outing supplied an unusually effective combination of four-seam fastballs and curveballs. The fastball accounted for 55.6% of those 117 pitches and the curve for 27.4%. Against Tampa Bay, the respective shares were 38.2% and 18.4%, while cutters and sinkers took more of the work.

That is a change from Boston, but not a complete departure from his season. Cutters represented 22.4% of Game 2, below their 25.6% regular-season share. The curve remained more common than its 9.8% season rate. The baseline contains 3,041 physical pitches in 33 games, March 27 through September 24, with the postseason kept separate.

The Rays also presented a different set of matchups. Left-handed batters accounted for 51 of his 76 pitches. Against those hitters, he threw four-seamers on 33.3% of pitches, compared with 49.4% in the regular season. That narrower comparison confirms less four-seam use in those matchups; it does not establish why he or the catcher selected another pitch.

Getting ahead was not the same as finishing

Seventeen of Schlittler's 23 plate appearances began with a recorded strike or contact. He was often able to get ahead. The problem was converting those counts into an out without a ball entering play.

Aranda's fifth-inning single came at 2-2. Earlier, Jonny DeLuca doubled on an 85.6 mph curve after falling behind 0-2 in the second. Tampa Bay put 19 balls in play, including 11 struck at least 95 mph, the Statcast threshold for hard contact. The four-seamer produced two misses in 20 swings; the curve produced three in eight.

Schlittler found useful finishes in the fourth, striking out Richie Palacios on an 85.6 mph curve, then finishing Taylor Walls with a 98.2 mph fastball. Yandy Díaz immediately followed with a 103.0 mph lineout, however, a reminder that the clean inning included another hard ball that the defense converted into an out.

The errors matter, and so does the contact

Ryan McMahon's fielding error started the first inning, and Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s throwing error accompanied Caminero's forceout. Liam Hicks then reached on catcher interference after a challenge overturned the original result. The final plate-appearance record credits no strikeout on that confrontation, even though the pitch record contains a called third strike.

Those plays extended the inning and helped create an unearned run. They cannot explain away Aranda's 103.1 mph first-inning single, DeLuca's double or the consecutive hard hits that opened the fifth. Nor was every scoring ball hard: Hicks drove in a run on a 55.1 mph groundout, and Chandler Simpson's 64.8 mph fielder's choice brought home Caminero.

Schlittler left after Simpson reached, with Tampa Bay ahead 3-1 and Simpson still on base. Simpson later scored on Richie Palacios' single against Brent Headrick. Schlittler's four charged runs therefore differ from both the score at his departure and the Rays' five-run final total.

Contact shaped the result

Schlittler needed 41 pitches for the first two innings, then completed the third and fourth in 21 more. The outing did not end with a clear collapse in four-seam speed. Only one four-seamer was measured in each of the last two innings, so those late averages cannot carry a fatigue diagnosis.

The stronger finding is that Tampa Bay repeatedly made contact against pitches that remained fast enough to resemble his established arsenal. The next useful question is whether he can recover the fastball misses while continuing to get ahead. This record supports that question without attributing every run to defense or treating one opponent's response as a permanent change.