Late Saturday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, Luis Severino was in a playful mood. The day was going so well that he only thought about pitching in the sun. He felt strong enough to think he could throw a 163 mph fastball. He was dressed to succeed and he knew it.
“I was walking down there today and realized that pinstripes really look good on you,” Severino said with a smile. “So I hope we can keep doing that for a long time.”
Severino had reason to be optimistic. The Yankees had just beaten the San Diego Padres (a team struggling to find a force to match their style) in the Bronx in 10 innings. After a 10-7 win on Sunday, they went 32-23 and continued to perform well after a slow start.
It’s relatively sturdy anyway. The Yankees were still batting .234 as a team by Sunday, their worst full-season average since the departure of Mickey Mantle in 1968. They are seven games behind the leader, trailing Tampa Bay and No. 2 Baltimore. A tough American League East division with no team ever losing.
Still, the prospects look much brighter when Severino pitches as he did on Saturday and only seven two-out errors prevent him from giving up a seven-game one-run performance.
Of course, there is a long way to go as there are many injuries and trades across the league. But no batting line-up would be happy to face Gerrit Cole, Nestor Cortez, an all-out Carlos Rodon and Severino in the short series — especially if Severino throws 97 mph with ease again. Domingo German, who is due to return on Monday after a troublesome suspension, is also doing well.
“We see an opportunity to have a very complete and talented group that is difficult to score,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Sevi is a frontline guy. When he’s on the mound, at his best, he can take on anyone, any attacker.”
The Padres are without star infielder Manny Machado with a hairline fracture in their left hand, and removed free-agent star Xander Bogaerts from Saturday’s lineup to rest a sore wrist. Severino worked admirably on makeshift orders, allowing just one home run and three walks by Fernando Tatis, Jr. in the sixth and two-thirds inning.
It was the second strong start for Severino, who missed the first 48 games of the season with a right lat strain. He lost two months to a similar injury last summer and missed most of the three seasons from 2019 to 2021 with shoulder and elbow problems.
Severino embodies the fragility of a power pitcher. In the 2017 and 2018 All-Star seasons, he threw the hardest fastball in the majors among eligible starters, averaging 97.6 mph in both seasons, according to Fangraphs.
Cole finished second in fastball velocity in the same season he spent in Pittsburgh and Houston, and has been healthy ever since. Severino admired him and called him a “monster”. Perhaps more common is the case of lefty Rodon, who underwent shoulder and elbow surgery with the Chicago White Sox before the 2021 All-Star season.
He played for the San Francisco Giants last year before signing a six-year, $162 million contract with the Yankees. A strained forearm and back problems have kept Rodon on the disabled list all season, and while he’s been inactive, he’s back in the clubhouse this week with the Yankees against the Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Dodgers. I plan to join the series.
“I’m happy to be here with the team, but when I was rehabbing in Tampa, it was hard to watch the game and look inside from the outside,” Rodon said. “I wanted to be one of them. Of course you have to try to be a good teammate every day, but it’s a lot easier when you’re pitching on the mound.”
Rodon has continued to do so — at least in the bullpen — and said he hasn’t had any discomfort in his back since getting cortisone shots in early May. The lack of exercise has turned the calendar — “I’m back on the crazy 15th of February,” he said — but finally he’s started the six-week routine that pitchers do in spring training. .
“Form was there in the bullpen yesterday,” Rodon said Saturday. “Obviously it’s not 98 mph, but the metrics on the pitch, all the carries, the shape, were the same as they were the last two years. It’s the same feeling going down the mound. It’s part of the process, getting stronger throws to hitters, and developing pitching endurance in the game, and that’s the steps I take.”
Given Severino and Rodon’s injury histories, reducing regular-season innings could help in the postseason. Perhaps it’s a benevolent look at the situation, but every team has to solve the mystery of keeping their best pitchers fresh when it matters most.
The Rays and Orioles are doing better than the Yankees so far. But while Tampa Bay has no pitchers to pitch 170 innings of the season, Baltimore has two minor leaguers Cole Irvin and Kyle Gibson.
The Toronto Blue Jays are the only team with just five starters in the majors this season, but consistency hasn’t translated into success. The team has been sluggish since the Yankees took three of four games at Rogers Center in mid-May. And while Chris Sale is finally growing again with the Red Sox, the rest of Boston’s patchwork rotation has a lot to prove.
With that in mind, third place in the AL East doesn’t seem so bad. The Yankees are imperfect, but if rotation strength is what matters most in the long run, they should be fine.
