Yankees‘ phenom Cam Schlittler will look to continue his flawless start to 2026 against the Athletics on Tuesday night in The Bronx.
Schlittler is 2-0 with a 0.00 ERA in his first two outings of the campaign. The 25-year-old has surrendered just three hits and no walks through 11 2/3 innings of work.
The Athletics will counter with veteran Aaron Civale. The 30-year-old earned a win in his only start of the season, allowing two runs on four hits and striking out three in five innings against the Braves on March 31.
Yankees vs. Athletics odds, prediction
It’s still early days, but Schlittler is working on something special for the Pinstripes.
The native of Walpole, Mass., became the first Yankees pitcher to allow zero runs with zero walks while recording at least 15 strikeouts in a two-game span, and he did that while setting a franchise record by becoming the first hurler to open a season with consecutive starts of at least five scoreless innings and seven strikeouts.
Schlittler has a fantastic chance to add to those marks on Tuesday when he takes on the swing-happy Athletics.
The A’s have the worst strikeout rate (29.6 percent) in the MLB so far this season, and it’s not like they’re making up for all the Ks with impressive power figures. Mark Kotsay’s club ranks 15th in ISO and slugging, and has 10 home runs through its first nine games.
It’s a matchup that heavily favors Schlittler, which is why the odds are so lopsided. Not only are the Yankees -245 on the moneyline, but their burgeoning ace is -700 to record at least five strikeouts.
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Instead of looking at the prices on a Yankees win as a way to take advantage of Schlittler’s presence, we’ll focus on the Over/Under, which is sitting at 8.5 runs.
Schlittler should do most of the heavy lifting for us, but we may be able to count on Civale to keep The Bronx Bombers quiet enough to get us to the window with the under.
The Yankees offense will likely surge up the leaderboard as the season goes on, but right now the Pinstripes rank eighth in wRC+ (108), ninth in xwOBA (.328), and 14th in slugging (.373).
Those aren’t concerning numbers, nor is it a worry that the Yanks only have nine homers (six of them off the bats of Aaron Judge and Ben Rice), but they are worth using in this situation.
Perhaps the Bombers break out against Civale, but they’ll likely need to put up a crooked number for this game to get to nine runs because it’s hard to envision Schlittler getting beat up in this matchup.
The Play: Under 8.5 (-118, FanDuel)
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Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.
