Yankees’ Luis Severino recovers from rocky start for best outing of spring
Sevy #Sevy
TAMPA — Three pitches into his penultimate start of the spring, Luis Severino had given up yet another home run, and before the inning was over, the Tigers added two more hits that came scorching off the bat at even higher triple-digit exit velocities.
Grapefruit League stats can often be misleading, and most of the time don’t matter, but Severino’s double-digit ERA was getting harder to ignore as he appeared to be on his way to another rocky outing.
Then the Yankees right-hander followed up with perhaps his most encouraging stretch of the spring to put any worrying minds at ease.
Severino went on to strike out nine batters over four innings while generating 13 swings-and-misses.
He threw 31 of his 74 pitches for sliders, working on the breaking ball that he had been unhappy with in previous starts, and getting five whiffs and seven called strikes with it.
“Best breaking ball and slider he’s had all spring,” manager Aaron Boone said after the Yankees’ 6-3 win at Steinbrenner Field. “I thought it was really sharp. It was really good. He threw a number of them where from my side angle, [it had] that late disappearing bite that Sevy’s known for. Life was there with the heater, a lot of swing and miss. Good day.”
Entering Tuesday, Severino had given up 13 earned runs and five home runs in 11 innings across his first four starts of the spring.
He had largely brushed off the results as he focused on finding out what pitches were working best on a given day and, most importantly, continuing to feel healthy.
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But Severino was pleased with the command of his slider on Tuesday as the Tigers failed to record a hit on the pitch.
“It was really good today,” Severino said. “I got [Jose Trevino catching] and he knew what was working, so he was calling it a lot.”
Trevino, returning to action from a sprained wrist, also took control of calling the game after the first inning.
Severino had said earlier this spring he hoped to call most of his pitches via the PitchCom device on his belt, but Trevino made the decision to take that responsibility off his plate and call the pitches from behind the plate.
“I said, ‘I suck [at] that,’ so …” Severino said with a laugh. “No, Trevy told me, ‘Hey, let me handle some of the calls. If you don’t agree with that pitch, call me off. But I have a sense of what you want, so I’m gonna call the pitches and you worry about executing the pitch.’ ”
Severino said he couldn’t argue with the results after the first inning and conceded that he expects to have his catcher call the game during the season (pitchers using PitchCom devices on their belt has not yet been approved for the regular season).
“I thought he threw the ball well, after the first,” Trevino said. “Just take some pressure off him. Put it all on me: ‘I’ll call the pitches and you can shake yes or no if you want that pitch or not, but I’m going to call it. You don’t have to call it anymore. I’ll do it. You shake yes or no to me.’ ”
Boone also said he liked having Trevino take control of calling the game and indicated that Severino giving up PitchCom duties could allow him to focus more on his pitches.
“There’s cases where it makes sense,” Boone said. “But I like when Trevy’s back there and they can get on the same page the right way and [Severino] doesn’t have to think about [working the PitchCom device]. You still have the ability to shake out there, but I think that’s a better rhythm to it. I think it frees Sevy up a little bit, too.”