“I saw him a few years ago against Braintree,” 94-year-old former Sox manager Joe Morgan said from his Walpole home during the game. “But his stuff wasn’t anything like this.”
“I knew this game wasn’t going to be too big for him,” said Yankee manager Aaron Boone.
What rookie’s ever been better in a postseason debut? Schlittler’s dominance in this clincher pushes the Yankees into a best-of-five Division Series vs. the Toronto Blue Jays and totally changes baseball’s postseason landscape. The Yankees are suddenly favorites to get back to the World Series.
It hurts to see this come at the expense of the Red Sox, who became baseball’s first team to lose a best-of-three Wild Card Series after winning Game 1.
Boston’s no-show in the finale should not diminish the excitement generated in the first two games. Game 1 featured Garrett Crochet and Aroldis Chapman throwing 100-m.p.h. heaters as the Sox beat the Yanks, 3-1. Unfortunately, Boston’s feel-good opener was doused with cold water in a 4-3 loss that featured bad baserunning, dubious decisions, and poor fundamentals.
Thursday’s winner-take-all featured two rookie pitchers. The Sox came out with 23-year-old lefty Connelly Early, making his fifth major league appearance. Early became the Sox youngest postseason starter since Babe Ruth toed the rubber against Brooklyn in the 1916 World Series.
New York countered with rookie Schlittler, who pitched at Northeastern after Walpole, and came to the bigs in July, going 4-3 with a 2.96 ERA in 14 starts.
Early was good, but got no support from his teammates at the plate or in the field.
Schlittler — son of Needham police chief John Schlittler and a Boston Globe All-Scholastic in 2017 and ’18 — was historic. On the biggest of baseball stages, he threw eight shutout innings and pushed to 100 m.p.h. or more with the frequency of Dale Earnhardt Jr. It’s hard to imagine he was ever this dominant at Eldracher Field in Walpole or Parsons Field in Brookline.
The Yanks rolled out Bucky (expletive) Dent for the ceremonial first pitch. Not a big surprise there. Old BFD is a standard go-to when the Bronx Bombers want to remind New England of how things used to be in this storied rivalry. Thurday’s clincher was played on the 47th anniversary of the Yankees’ one-game playoff win at Fenway in 1978.
Early had never pitched in an environment like this. His college stints in the Patriot League (he pitched for Army) and ACC (Virginia) featured nothing like the House That Jeter Built, and his only two road big league starts were in Sacramento and Tampa — minor league facilities which were big league homes for the A’s and Rays, respectively, in 2025.
Boston’s preppy-cheeked lefty went toe-to-toe with Schlittler initially. He needed only eight pitches to set down the Yanks in the first, and struck out five in the first three innings.
Then came the disastrous fourth, when the Yankees didn’t hit the ball particularly hard, but chased Early, cracking four hits and pushing four runs across with help from Boston’s traditionally shoddy defense. (The Sox led MLB with 116 errors.)
It all started with Cody Bellinger’s high pop into the Bermuda Triangle in shallow right-center. Romy Gonzalez dashed out from second while Ceddanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu charged in from their positions. A diving Rafaela came close, but the ball clipped off the end of his mitt for a double. This play had me wishing Dwight Evans, Fred Lynn, and Jerry Remy were still playing for the Carmine Hose. The ball would have been caught.
After Giancarlo Stanton walked and Ben Rice fanned, Amed Rosario scalded a single to left, scoring Bellinger from second. Jazz Chisholm Jr. loaded the bases with a single to right, then Anthony Volpe scored Stanton with a ground ball single to right to make it 2-0.
For the first time in his short big league career, Early was rattled. He had to deal with a small delay while the umps decided there was not catcher’s inteference on a 3-2 foul-tip pitch to Austin Wells. When play resumed, Wells smacked a totally catchable hard-hopper toward Sox first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, who was once a Gold Glover.
Not anymore.
The ball clanged off Lowe’s mitt for an error and two more runs. (Where’s George Scott when you need him?) After Early got Trent Grisham on a fly to right, Alex Cora came out with the hook. Early’s night was over early.
Schlittler’s was just getting started. He mowed down the soft Sox lineup and got stronger in the late innings. It was no contest.
The Sox scored six runs in three playoff games and got virtually nothing from any batters other than Trevor Story and Masataka Yoshida. They were a fun team and they qualified for the playoffs for the first time since 2021. It was a nice start.
But they weren’t anywhere near good enough for a deep run in October. Schlittler and the Yanks stopped them cold in the finale. And we have all winter to debate if this was a successful season.