Hour 1: Schlittler, Rice and a Yankees Win

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Michael Kay (0:41)

And good afternoon, everybody. This is indeed The Michael Kay Show. We thank you for joining us on this Wednesday, September 30th, 2026 It's me and you for two. Those are the rules of engagements, the fastest moving two hours in Sports Talk Radio.

And it is because I have great co-hosts, 1-800-919-3776.

That is the membership number. And we start off, I mean, what an awful, awful first game. Awful. I mean, how is it possible that Boston shuts out New York? It just doesn't make sense to me. I mean, you think about this game for the longest time, it's the first game, and then all of a sudden, Boston shuts out New York.

Ray (1:21)

Michael, we said we were going to start with the baseball game, not the hockey game.

Michael Kay (1:27)

Oh, I'm sorry. I was talking about the Bruins and the Rangers. My bad. Thank you, Ray. That's why you're a great producer. Now, the Yankee game was a pretty special occasion at Yankee Stadium yesterday. They win 9-0. Ben Rice has an unbelievable game. Cam Schlittler again, unbelievable pitching into the 7th inning, throwing 117 pitches. And what makes it more painful other than just to gain one loss for the Red Sox is its mass appeal. Because both of these guys from New England, both of these guys could have been drafted by the Red Sox, both of these guys drafted by the Yankees and in the late rounds. In the late rounds, Cam Schlittler was drafted in the 7th round.

Ben Rice was drafted in the 12th round. And the Ben Rice drafting was pretty impressive in that, you know, as the middle of COVID, there was no season. He organized workouts on his own, which the Yankees and their scout Matt Hyde attended. So they took a flyer on him in the 12th round. And now he's turned into this outstanding player. 41 home runs, 97 runs batted in during the regular season. And Cam Schlittler, you know, he left it in the 7th round out of Northeastern, was a skinny kid who threw 91 miles an hour. I think his first fastball yesterday was a 101 mile an hour fastball. He was outstanding. The Yankees have developed a legitimate top flight ace. Now think about how great you have to be to ascend to the level of being an ace when you're on a staff with Max Freed and Garrett Cole. And the Yankees, I know they toyed with the idea of saving him for game two. I was dead set against it. I said he's the best pitcher in the American League, and he should indeed start the first game. And that's what happened. He started the first game. He acquitted himself beautifully. And the Yankees jump out to a one game to nothing lead in a best of three wild card. Now, how important is that? In 16 previous wild cards, since this format was adopted, the team that won the first game went 15-1. And the only loss was last year, because the Yankees lost the first game to the Red Sox, and they came back to win games two and game three. And by the way, the guy who won game three was Cam Schlittler. And that game was probably better than last night's game, because he went eight innings, 12 strikeouts, no walks. Yesterday, 10 strikeouts, one walk. He was just superb. Nothing rattles this kid. He uses little perceived slights as motivation. He feeds off a crowd of over 48,000 people at Yankee Stadium. Nothing rattles him. Nothing rattles him. Some veterans should take a class on how this guy deals with everything that's been thrown at him at a very young age. He's 25 years old. And he's on the mound like he's, you know, he's been in the big leagues for 10 years. He hasn't. He hasn't. And when he got called up last year, nobody was expecting anything like this, because when he got called up, was out of necessity because they were running out of pitchers and he was coming off a bad start at AAA.