How Cam Schlittler’s bicep encapsulates his rise from ‘quiet kid’ to Yankees X-factor

To understand the overwhelming nature of the stuff, check the faces of baffled Red Sox hitters, the 18 whiffs, the fastball that averaged — averaged — 98.9 mph and exceeded 100 mph 11 times. Cam Schlittler’s postseason debut was a masterpiece [http://To understand the overwhelming nature of the stuff, check the faces of baffled Red Sox hitters, the 18 whiffs, the fastball that averaged — averaged — 98.9 mph and exceeded 100 mph 11 times. Cam Schlittler’s postseason debut was a masterpiece in which he blazed his way through the Boston lineup for eight scoreless innings with 12 strikeouts and no walks — the first pitcher in MLB postseason history with that stat line. The Yankees will rely upon that stuff and that pitcher Wednesday after coming back from a five-run deficit in a 9-6 Game 3 victory in The Bronx on Tuesday that kept hopes alive. To understand the willpower behind the person, check Schlittler’s bicep. “I still feel it now,” Schlittler said, running his left hand over his right arm. “I got a little bump.” n n n The elite stuff was not always there. Schlittler was a strong, raw athlete, who also was a 6-foot-6 basketball player at Walpole High School, who was recruited to colleges while throwing 88-90 mph. He began to blossom with harder, if not hardest, stuff at Northeastern and watched as his freshman season was wiped away by COVID-19. His redshirt freshman season of 2021 became a breakout year in which Schlittler pitched to a 1.88 ERA in 76 ²/₃ innings and got more comfortable on the mound and off as the season wore on, “just a quiet kid getting out of his shell,” Northeastern head coach Mike Glavine said over the phone. Schlittler became the Colonial Athletic Association’s rookie of the year and a freshman All-American during a season in which he gained trust. On May 27, 2021, Glavine gave the ball to Schlittler for a conference tournament game against the College of Charleston. The righty was sailing along in what was then the biggest game of his life when he remembers being “smoked” by a comebacker late in the game. In the time it took from the ball to bounce off Schlittler’s arm and for Schlittler to glance down at that arm, his bicep already had grown purple. “I was like, ‘Jesus Christ,’ ” Schlittler said. “But I had so much adrenaline.” Northeastern already had pulled ahead in a contest in which it scored six runs in the first inning. Glavine hustled to the mound to check on his pitcher and was met with defiance. “He said, ‘There’s no effing way I’m coming out of the game,’ ” said Glavine, who listened to his ace. “ ‘OK, just checking in.’ I walked right back to the dugout. But [he had] that type of competitiveness on the field even then.” Schlittler again took the ball and finished off an eight-inning, three-run gem in a victory to help Northeastern advance in the winner’s bracket of the tournament. Three days later, Northeastern had a date with UNC Wilmington in the championship. UNC Wilmington had won the tournament in 2018 and ’19, beating Northeastern three times in the double-elimination playoff along the way. Schlittler, who has proven to find motivational edges wherever he can, inherited the history and channeled it. “We’ve had so much back and forth with UNCW,” he said. “It was kind of more of a personal game for our team.” A game in which his team did not have a clear starter. The Huskies had beaten Charleston on a Thursday. Sunday they were set to play Wilmington. On Saturday, Glavine approached Schlittler with the idea of using him as a closer, if necessary, on two days of rest. Schlittler was not sure how his arm would respond, both from the line drive and from the workload, but he was up for it. On Sunday morning, Glavine approached Schlittler again and proposed for his best pitcher to start the game — three days after throwing 101 pitches over eight innings. “I was like, ‘Yeah, screw it … just give me the ball, I’m going to go do what I need to do,’ ” said Schlittler, who then pitched two scoreless innings before handing a jam to his bullpen in the third inning of what became a wild, walk-off 11-10 victory for Northeastern’s first ever CAA tournament championship. “There’s a little bit throwback there,” said Glavine, the brother of Tom. “He’s always been a guy that’s wanted the ball, wanted the big moments. The personality and the confidence and the makeup just have come so far.” n n n Yankees fans became familiar with the stuff when the 2022 seventh-round pick sailed through the minors this season, debuted in July, ignored the trade rumors and pitched his way through a strong final three months of the season. He leapfrogged several starters and earned the Game 3 start in the wild-card series. That is when the rest of the baseball world learned about Schlittler, who dissected the Red Sox with a coldness, expressing little emotion on the mound and plenty off of it as he called out the Red Sox fans who had harassed his mother, in particular, leading up to the game. A kid raised just outside of Boston has gone from Northeastern to a fairly anonymous Yankees rookie to the sport’s spotlight, now given the ball for a second time this postseason with his team facing elimination. He’s hoping it will go as smoothly as the big games of his past. “I wasn’t surprised that he was ready for that moment [against the Red Sox],” said Glavine, who had seen it before. “It wasn’t going to be too big for him.”] in which he blazed his way through the Boston lineup for eight scoreless innings with 12 strikeouts and no walks — the first pitcher in MLB postseason history with that stat line. [https://nypost.com/2025/10/03/sports/cam-schlittlers-epic-yankees-breakthrough-how-it-sounded/] ACCESS THE YANKEES BEAT LIKE NEVER BEFORE Don’t miss Greg Joyce’s text messages from The Bronx and beyond — he’s giving Sports+ subscribers the inside buzz on the Yankees. Sign Up Now [https://nypost.com/account/settings/texts/] The Yankees will rely upon that stuff and that pitcher Wednesday after coming back from a five-run deficit in a 9-6 Game 3 victory in The Bronx [https://nypost.com/2025/10/07/sports/aaron-judge-leads-yankees-to-game-3-alds-win-over-blue-jays/] on Tuesday that kept hopes alive. To understand the willpower behind the person, check Schlittler’s bicep.

How Cam Schlittler’s bicep encapsulates his rise from ‘quiet kid’ to Yankees X-factor

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