Two young Yankees who grew up minutes from Fenway Park are powering New York’s surge, according to the report. Cam Schlittler has emerged as an early American League Cy Young favorite in his first full big-league season, while Ben Rice is producing at an MVP-level clip in his third major league campaign.
Schlittler, 25, is from Walpole, Massachusetts, and spent his youth as a Red Sox fan, idolizing David Ortiz, Mookie Betts, Chris Sale, Dustin Pedroia, Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez, according to the report. He said he wore Jonathan Papelbon, Clay Buchholz and Xander Bogaerts jerseys and walked the five minutes from campus to Fenway for games while in college.
That fandom ended when the Yankees selected Schlittler with the 220th pick in 2022. “I mean, you grow up and you’re taught to just hate the Yankees,” he said. “You don’t really have a reason why. It’s just like what you’re supposed to do.” Schlittler added that being drafted by New York shifted his focus to his career and the Yankees’ reputation for pitching development, and he said the Red Sox have been better since then, according to the report.
Rice, 27, is from Cohasset and was a Yankees fan from an early age. He showed up to picture day in first grade wearing Yankees gear, had a Derek Jeter poster in his bedroom and once wrote “Yankees Rule” on the Pesky Pole during a Fenway tour, according to the report. Rice remembers attending Red Sox-Yankees games and watching players such as Robinson Cano from the visitors’ on-deck circle.
Both players followed similar, undersung paths to New York. Rice attended Dartmouth and was a 12th-round pick in 2021; Schlittler went to Northeastern and was taken in the seventh round in 2022. Yankees area scout Matt Hyde advocated for each, and both said the Red Sox showed differing levels of interest in them, according to the report.
Neither player was viewed as a top prospect when they debuted — Rice in 2024 and Schlittler in 2025 — but both, barring injury or a sudden downturn, are expected to be on the American League All-Star team in Philadelphia next month, according to the report.
