By the time the Braves left town Sunday, they had experienced what the Yankees hope their postseason foes will have to feel, provided that their lineup can hang on just enough to get there.
“We came in here and faced three No. 1s, really, three aces,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said Sunday.
Max Fried, Gerrit Cole and Cam Schlittler started the three games and combined to hold what had been one of the majors’ highest-scoring lineups to just three runs on 12 hits and two walks across 20 ¹/₃ innings with 27 strikeouts.
And that, even with the mounting worries about their scuffling lineup, is what the Yankees are banking on not only to reach October but to use as a roadmap for a deep run when they get there.
The Yankees rotation has been best in show all season, entering Monday with a major league-leading 13.4 fWAR. And that is despite missing Cole for the first two months as he finished off his Tommy John rehab, then missing Fried for another two-plus months with a left elbow bone bruise.
But they have taken it to another level of late — coinciding with Fried’s return from the injured list to join Cole, Schlittler, Ryan Weathers and Will Warren as Carlos Rodón now works his way back again — allowing one or no runs in nine of their past 12 starts and 12 of their past 17 (and two or fewer runs in 10 of 12 and 13 of 17).
At a time when their lineup is struggling mightily to push runs across, the Yankees starters are the biggest reason why this stretch has not destroyed them, even if they waste the occasional gem like Schlittler’s seven innings of one-run ball Sunday.
“It’s tough, but that’s the reality of where we are right now,” manager Aaron Boone said. “But also, it’s a big reason why I have the highest of hopes for our club still. Because I feel like the guy that takes the ball every day [gives us a strong chance to win] — and we have the ability to close out games, and I still fully believe that we are going to continue to get better offensively.
“But obviously we need to be the team we hope and expect.”
Assuming the Yankees can keep the trio healthy, when is the last time they have entered the postseason with a top three as good as Schlittler (2.21 ERA), Cole (3.35) and Fried (2.88)? That is the current AL Cy Young favorite, a recent AL Cy Young winner and a lefty who has the seventh-lowest ERA (2.86) in the majors since the start of 2025 among pitchers who have thrown at least 250 innings in that span.
Their best trio of starters entering a postseason under Boone may have been 2022, when they rolled out Cole, Luis Severino and Nestor Cortes. Before that, the last time they had at least three starters with a 3.65 ERA or lower across 100-plus innings during the regular season (which Schlittler, Fried and Cole are on track to do) was 1998, when David Cone, Orlando Hernández and David Wells fronted the rotation.
In between, they led with CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte on the way to their last title in 2009; Mike Mussina, Pettitte, Roger Clemens and Wells on the way to the World Series in 2003; Clemens, Pettitte, Mussina and Wells in 2002; Clemens, Pettitte and Mussina on the way to the World Series in 2001; and Clemens, Pettitte and Hernández on the way to titles in 1999 and 2000.
Of course, terrific regular seasons from Schlittler, Fried and Cole will mean little unless they can make them mean something in the postseason like those trios from the glory days.
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For now, though, the rotation’s success continues to give the Yankees hope for October, especially because their recent run of dominance has come against teams mostly in playoff position and some of the best lineups in the game.
Since July 6, Yankees starters have pitched to a 2.91 ERA in 29 games — the second-lowest ERA in that span (to the Tigers’ 2.50) and the highest fWAR (4.9 to the Tigers’ 3.9). During that stretch, they have faced the AL East-leading Rays, the Nationals (most runs scored in the majors), the NL West-leading Dodgers (No. 4 in runs), the Pirates (No. 3 in runs), the Phillies, the AL Central-leading White Sox (No. 8 in runs), the Cubs (No. 2 in runs), the Cardinals and the NL East-leading Braves (No. 6 in runs). Largely because of their pitching, they have gone 17-12 in that span, filled with tight, low-scoring games.
“At the moment, those guys got to be almost perfect for us to be in the ballgame,” Austin Wells said, “and they have been, which has been incredible.”
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