Hour 1: Ace Schlittler

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This is The Michael Kay Show podcast.

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**Michael Kay** (0:41)
And a good afternoon everybody. This is indeed The Michael Kay Show. We thank you for joining us on this Tuesday. It's July 7th, 2026 me and you for two. Those are the rules of engagements. Fastest two hours on Sports Talk Radio. And you know the membership number. Of course you do. 1-800-919-3776. You are watching us on the Espn New York YouTube channel made possible by our good friends at the Parisman Firm. We thank them. You're also listening on Espn New York and Espn New York's 880 So you've got a lot of ways to consume the show and we have a lot of things to talk about. A lot of things to talk about. Well, the USA lost yesterday to Belgium. So now we can all, I'm going to steal this line from my good friend Gordon Dahmer. Now we could all stop pretending that we're soccer experts. Wouldn't you agree? Every four years we become soccer experts and then when the USA is knocked out, we're no longer soccer experts. But we'll talk about that a little bit later on. What I want to start with is what was a very, very important victory for the New York Yankees yesterday because Cam Schlittler did for them what aces do for their team. The Yankees have been spiraling out of control. Every aspect of what makes a team a winner has gone by the wayside. They haven't hit, they haven't fielded, they haven't run the bases well, and they haven't pitched well, even the starters. And now they were starting a four-game set last night against a team that has passed them in the standings. The Tampa Bay Rays. And what Cam Schlittler did, a guy who was in his first full season in the big leagues, is he said, not on my watch. He was absolutely dominating. He pitched eight innings, gave up one run. They had a couple of hits against them, three hits against them, and they were all very soft contact bloopers. I think the top one was 77 miles an hour off the bat. He gave up one run.
And the Yankees only had three hits. So their offensive problem still exists. They only had three hits, but fortunately for them, their three hits all left the yard. A two run home run by Jose Caballero, a solo shot and then a home run by Ben Rice. So the Yankees ended up winning a game that they really, really needed to win.
But all credit goes to Cam Schlittler. Now it's funny, you know, been doing this show or some iteration of this show for about 25 years now. And the thing that we always talked about when Don and I were together, even before Peter joined us, is that Don used to do the Jet pregame show with Greg Buttle. And Greg Buttle said, There is no such thing as bulletin board fodder. He said, it's nonsense, it's made up. And I, I mean, with all due respect to Greg, who I love, and he also played football at the highest level, I would respect him, but I would respectfully disagree with him. Because if there wasn't such thing as bulletin board fodder, then why even bother with it? He said, if you can't get yourself up to play without artificial, um, stimulus, then you're not really a good player anyway. But after the game yesterday, Cam Schlittler said that some people were calling his last two starts, you know, a regression to the means. He didn't say that, but that, that's where some people on social media were, were, you know, pointing out that, you know, he can never be as great as he's been. This is kind of a regression to what he's going to be. And those caught his eye. And he wanted to stick it to those people and to the Tampa Bay Rays. Because he came off a start against the Detroit Tigers where he didn't look good. He gave up four home runs in that game. That was arguably the worst start that he ever made in his young big league career. Then he had that start against the Red Sox where his defense betrayed him. He didn't give up an earn run, but he gave up a home run to Caleb Durbin, gave up hits after the errors and they weren't earned, but they counted. So there was two subpar starts in a row for guy who's been nothing but above par.