PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — What Clarke Schmidt lacks in stuff, he makes up for with confidence.
It is what helped him get through a rough beginning to last season to turn into a dependable back-end starter.
It is why he believes he has another leap to take this year.
And it is also the reason why Aaron Boone has not felt the need to talk with his right-hander about the incessant rumors linking the Yankees to free agent Blake Snell, who could theoretically take Schmidt’s spot in the rotation if every other starter were to stay healthy in the hypothetical situation.
“Clarke’s not human,” Boone said Tuesday. “Clarke’s the most confident person in the world. That’s so much just speculation. He’s getting ready to go dominate the league in his mind, and rightfully so. He’s now established himself, in my eyes, as a starting pitcher in this league. I’m ready for him to take another step hopefully in his continued development in that regard.”
As for how Schmidt is blocking out the noise?
“Same way I block out having a seven ERA [it was only 6.30] in the first month and a half of the season in New York,” Schmidt said with a laugh after making his Grapefruit League debut by throwing two innings in a 4-2 loss to the Rays at Charlotte Sports Park.
Of course, Schmidt stayed the course — settling in to post a 4.08 ERA across his final 24 outings — and the Yankees are now in position to benefit from that full year of development if he is able to keep building.
But the 28-year-old Schmidt admitted it was not always easy to keep that confidence high through his early struggles last year.
“It’s kind of like a mask — sometimes you have to fool yourself,” he said. “It’s like this blind confidence. Sometimes your mind can get wrapped up in, ‘Damn, am I cut out for this?’ Or whatever it may be, that doubt starts to creep in and that noise can get loud. I think the biggest thing is our minds are very powerful. You can almost trick yourself into being like, ‘OK, I can do whatever I want to do.’ So for me, I try to have that blind confidence to where I just don’t get affected by much.”
Boone chuckled thinking back to Schmidt’s confidence being sky-high ever since he first met the Yankees’ first-round pick from 2017.
In that way, Boone said, Schmidt and former Yankees right-hander Michael King are alike.
“Even at times along their journey when I was like, maybe they didn’t have the right to have that much confidence,” Boone said. “But it’s real.
“Clarke is a dog. He’s not afraid of anything. He loves the competition, he loves to be in it and he keeps getting better and better as a starting pitcher.”
Besides Schmidt’s “blind confidence,” there are early signs this spring that have him encouraged about taking another jump this year.
Coming off the heaviest workload of his career (159 innings), Schmidt is feeling fresh.
He battled fatigue at the end of last season and his mechanics began to suffer because of it.
But he spent the offseason cleaning them up and now is staying behind the ball better in his delivery, which has resulted in an uptick in velocity.
He said his sinker was sitting 94-96 mph on Tuesday (Statcast was not publicly available at the stadium) after the pitch averaged 93.5 mph last year.
“I feel like it’s coming out really easy,” said Schmidt, who struck out two and gave up a pair of hits (one a fly ball that left fielder Everson Pereira lost in the sun) that led to a run.
There is still more work to be done for Schmidt to translate all of that into better, more consistent results this season.
But with a full batch of confidence — which he attributed to his parents instilling in him and trusting in his faith — he has a fighting chance.
“I’m just going to show people this year — the proof is in the pudding,” he said. “I learned a lot from last year and I know what I’m capable of doing and I know how high my ceiling can get. I’m very, very excited to show the fans that, too.”