Schlittler, Rice author 'remarkable' night as Yankees roll in Game 1 — SkimNews
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- Cam Schlittler delivered 6⅓ scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts and just two hits allowed in the Yankees' 9-0 wild-card Game 1 win over the Red Sox.
- Ben Rice went 4-for-5 with two home runs—including a grand slam—and six RBIs, becoming the sixth player in MLB history (and first Yankee) with at least four hits and six RBIs in a postseason game.
- Schlittler and Rice both grew up in the Boston area and attended New England colleges (Northeastern and Dartmouth), drafted by the Yankees in the seventh and 12th rounds before starring against their hometown team.
- Schlittler threw a career-high 117 pitches—the most by a Yankees postseason pitcher since CC Sabathia in 2012—and leaned on a curveball that produced a 57% whiff rate on 27% usage, up from 9.8% in the regular season.
- Schlittler is the heavy AL Cy Young favorite (1.95 ERA, 239 strikeouts, 193⅔ innings), while Rice's 41-home-run, .897-OPS breakout helped sustain a Yankees offense missing Aaron Judge for most of the year.
- The Red Sox, who scored the fewest runs in the majors in September, were held to three hits as a team—one fewer than Rice produced alone—marking the Yankees' largest shutout postseason win since the 1960 World Series.
Why it matters: Two homegrown, Boston-area players—a likely AL Cy Young winner and a breakout slugger—delivering in tandem offers the Yankees a credible offensive and pitching foundation with Aaron Judge sidelined, while Boston's month-long offensive collapse deepens into a postseason crisis after being outhit by Rice alone.
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