Aaron Boone just confirmed Cam Schlittler will be limited to start Yankees season

It feels like Déjà vu all over again. Last spring, the New York Yankees' starting rotation looked flush, only for them to quickly lose Gerrit Cole, Clarke Schmidt, and Luis Gil to injury as spring training kicked off. This time around, the hits came earlier. Cole is still on the mend after undergoing Tommy John surgery, and we learned shortly after the 2025 season ended that Carlos Rodón would be laid up to start the 2026 campaign.

With the depth already being tested, we learned that Cam Schlittler was going to be slowed by back inflammation and a sore lat despite pitchers and catchers reporting just a day earlier. It was curious at the time. Was this something that came up while he was working out on his own over the winter? Team workouts had literally just begun when the injury became public. Then it was revealed that this was something he'd been dealing with since last summer.

Concern started to rise, but if this discomfort hadn't required any sort of offseason surgery, it probably wasn't that severe. Unfortunately, the Yankees can never just be transparent and instead insist on dropping worrisome bread crumb after worrisome bread crumb.

The latest red flag now is Aaron Boone's latest comments, which confirm that Schlittler will be limited to start the regular season.

Is there another shoe to drop? Could this get worse? We're not yet at the point where we're pressing the panic button, but we were just told nobody was coming into spring training injured only to learn Schlittler and Giancarlo Stanton did.

Aaron Boone's latest Cam Schlittler update is concerning and confirms the Yankees phenom will be limited to start 2026 regular season

The good news is that Schlittler is still getting his work in to some extent. He just started throwing batting practice to live hitters, and he's apparently on track to be ready for Opening Day ... with some limitations.

"I’ll take 70 pitches of Cam Schlittler,” Aaron Boone said. “Especially with some of the off-days you have, even if you’re in a piggyback situation for a time or two, sign me up for that.”

Translation: the delay in ramp-up will force him on a pitch count early as he catches up. That doesn't sound too bad, even if it's less than ideal.

The problem is the Yankees keep dropping these nuggets that become more and more ominous. What are the chances that this is a situation that gets aggravated and changes the prognosis? How likely is it that they have misdiagnosed this, and the injury is more severe than they originally thought? Is there something more that they're withholding?

It's all speculation at this point, but without Rodón and Cole, Schlittler was going to be incredibly important. With Ryan Weathers and Luis Gil both carrying checkered health records of their own, it's only a hop, skip, and a jump until the rotation is in true peril.

We should be talking about the progress he's made in improving his secondaries to pair with his blazing fastball. We should be thinking about what the next step for him might look like. Instead, we're holding our breath and waiting for an IL stint, all the while wondering how honest the Yankees are truly being.