Yankees' Cam Schlittler would appear to be the front-runner for the American League Cy Young Award

By any objective measure, Cam Schlittler, in his first full season in the majors, is having one of the best seasons any Yankees starter has ever had.

Schlittler, who is expected to start Saturday against the Diamondbacks in Phoenix, is 14-6 with a 1.95 ERA. Those numbers alone, however, don’t tell the full story of Schlittler’s 2026 season, one that has established him as a co-favorite, along with Dylan Cease of the Blue Jays, for the American League Cy Young Award.

After Schlittler threw six scoreless innings Sunday afternoon in a 2-0 victory over the Mets, manager Aaron Boone even made a push for him to be considered for another award.

“He might be the MVP, too,” Boone said. “It’s been awesome. Just an awesome season.”

That, of course, is a long shot at best. Many voters, not to mention players, see the MVP as the sole dominion of position players, just as the Cy Young Award is reserved for pitchers.

“He’s definitely pitching like an MVP,” Aaron Judge said after Sunday's win. “They’ve got a Cy Young Award for a reason — best pitcher in the game. He’s got my vote definitely for the Cy Young.”

Regardless, Schlittler is in the midst of a strong finishing kick to his year, and it is not a stretch to say he has emerged as the favorite with just over a week left in the regular season.

Though Schlittler has the edge over Cease in many of the numbers — traditional as well as what would be considered more “modern” ones — used when it comes to evaluating pitchers for the Cy Young Award, Cease has some of those in his favor as well.

Digging into many of those numbers, all of them as of Wednesday afternoon:

Schlittler is second in the American League in wins with 14 compared to 11 for Cease (11-6), though Cy Young Award voters have put little emphasis on wins in the last decade-plus.

The Mariners' Felix Hernandez, for instance, won the AL Cy Young Award in 2010 after going 13-12 (with an MLB-leading 2.27 ERA, one of many statistics, both old-school and new-school, in which he led). The Mets' Jacob deGrom won the NL award in 2018 after going 10-9 (with an MLB-best 1.70 ERA and dominating pretty much every other statistical category), and the Pirates' Paul Skenes took NL honors last season after going 10-10 (with an MLB-leading 1.97 ERA and widespread statistical dominance elsewhere).

Schlittler leads Cease in ERA, 1.95 to 2.38; walks and hits per innings pitched (WHIP), 0.90 to 1.06; innings, 184 2/3 to 166 1/3, and Wins above Replacement, 7.0 to 6.1, according to baseball-reference.com, and 5.9 to 5.6, according to Fangraphs.com.

Schlittler also holds the edge in ERA+, a statistic measuring the quality of a pitcher’s ERA compared to the league average, adjusting to the ballpark he pitches in, with the league average being 100.

Cease’s ERA+ is 185, a terrific, Cy Young Award-worthy number in many years, but this year it ranks him second in the AL to Schlittler’s extraordinary ERA+ of 216 (deGrom’s ERA+ in 2018 was 218, Skenes’ in 2025 was 226).

Schlittler's “calling card” from the time he was promoted to the big leagues in July 2025 has been command, according to Boone, and he dominates Cease in that category as well.

Despite pitching 18 1/3 more innings, Schlittler has walked only 44 batters to Cease's 72. Schlittler ranks fifth in the AL in walks per nine innings at 2.1 and Cease ranks 22nd at 3.9.

Cease does have some numbers in his favor.

Despite throwing 18 1/3 fewer innings, Cease has 236 strikeouts, tied for the MLB lead, to Schlittler’s 228, giving the former a ratio of 12.8 strikeouts per nine innings to the latter’s 11.1. Cease has 13 games with at least nine strikeouts, the most of any pitcher in the AL, and Schlittler has seven such games.

Cease has been slightly harder to hit, with opposing batters producing a .177 batting average against, which leads the AL among qualified starting pitchers, compared to a .185 batting average against for Schlittler (which ranks him second in that category). Cease is allowing 5.7 hits per nine innings and Schllittler is allowing 6.0.

Cease has allowed only 11 homers in his 166 1/3 innings and Schlittler has allowed 16 in his 184 2/3 innings.

Cease also holds the edge over Schlittler in Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), which attempts to measure a pitcher’s performance based on those elements he directly controls before a ball is put in play and the vagaries of defense become a factor. Those would be strikeouts, walks, homers allowed and hit batsmen.

Cease leads the AL in FIP at 2.48. Schlittler is second at 2.57.

Though Cease does hold an advantage in some of the difficulty-to-hit categories, they likely won’t be enough — at the moment, anyway — to  deny Schlittler's bid to  become the seventh Yankee to win a Cy Young Award (Gerrit Cole was the most recent in 2023).

And there’s this: Schlittler’s closing argument has been especially eye-popping. He’s allowed one  run or fewer in an MLB-leading (and franchise-record) 21 starts this season, including in each of his last seven starts, going 4-0 with a 1.00 ERA and a 0.76 WHIP in that span. He has a 0.81 ERA and 0.72 WHIP in those 21 games. In two other games, he allowed zero or one earned run.

Schlittler has allowed three or fewer runs in 27 of his 31 starts and two or fewer in 24 of them.

Cease has 16 outings in which he allowed one run or fewer, certainly an impressive number, but has not pitched quite as well of late, 4-0 with a 2.70 ERA in his previous seven outings.

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.