Payton Tolle is a tall, young, fastball-heavy starting pitcher who leads a playoff-bound AL East rotation. He’s also left-handed and smiles a lot, the two characteristics that separate him from AL Cy Young front-runner Cam Schlittler.
Like Schlittler, Tolle entered the 2026 season with high potential but also uncertainty due to his age and unconventional pitch repertoire. So far, Schlittler and Tolle have thrown 4,487 fastballs combined this year, compared to just 576 non-fastballs. Both strike out more than 28% of hitters and walk less than 7% of batters. Additionally, their chase and whiff rates are each within 2.5 percentage points of one another.
The only place they differ? Results in the scorebook. Schlittler holds a 1.95 ERA with 14 wins, while Tolle holds a 3.02 ERA with nine wins (albeit in six fewer starts). Predictably, Tolle ranks 15th among pitchers in Wins Above Replacement, while Schlittler trails only Jacob Misiorowski.
Stats aside, one is heading for a Cy Young Award and the other wasn’t even an All-Star in 2026.
But wait, there’s a little more to this conversation than you might think. What if I told you that Schlittler has been far luckier than Tolle this year?
According to Statcast, Tolle owns a 2.65 expected ERA. This naturally suggests that he is pitching better than his 3.02 ERA. Meanwhile, Schlittler owns a 2.86 expected ERA. This would suggest that he is pitching nearly a full run worse than his 1.95 ERA.
Tolle’s 2.65 xERA is third among all starters in baseball. Schlittler’s 2.86 mark ranks sixth, behind Dylan Cease and Jesús Luzardo. Tolle also ranks third in xwOBA (expected weighted on-base average), which measures contact quality in terms of exit velocity, launch angle and launch direction.
The key takeaway is that Tolle should be a top-three pitcher based on his process. Instead, he’s a top-15 to top-20 pitcher based on his outcomes. Baseball is a results-based business, so there’s little to no argument that he’s actually a better pitcher than Schlittler.
But the logic is real, and it’s clear. Schlittler is performing fantastically this year in two distinct areas that evaluators often call “unsustainable.” Those two aspects are BABIP (batting average on balls in play) and LOB% (left-on-base percentage).
The BABIP theory is a common one; at some point, batted balls will find grass instead of gloves, and a pitcher’s BABIP will regress to a more typical level, thus diminishing the pitcher’s overall results. The LOB% theory is simple too: a pitcher who is really “clutch” with runners on base will eventually see the hits they allow bunch together more often, and while they’ll still get just as many outs, the timing of those outs will regress to a more typical level.
It’s a lot of moving parts, for sure. However, the central thought is that their on-field results should be much closer than they actually are at the moment. Basing this on expected stats and batted-ball luck is a fair claim.
I have a nonstatistical argument, too. Because Tolle and Schlittler are so similar, I naturally believe that their results will look more similar in the future. This is far simpler reasoning, though less scientifically defensible.
Both lean on a three-fastball combo: a four-seamer, sinker and cutter. Both stand 6-foot-5 and are in their mid-20s (Tolle 23, Schlittler 25). They are the aces on opposite sides of an AL East rivalry. Both love to attack hitters up in the zone with all of their fastballs.
The only notable differences in their stuff are that Schlittler throws his cutter significantly harder, and his other two heaters clock about 2 to 3 mph harder than Tolle’s. However, let’s not forget that the average right-handed pitcher throws 1.7 mph harder than the average left-hander.
They use different windups, stand on different parts of the rubber and feature slightly different arm angles. Regardless, the method of attack is exactly the same. It’s very possible that Boston and New York will face off in the Wild Card Series for a second straight year.
An October Tolle vs. Schlittler matchup would feed baseball fans as if they were starving.