SEVY SENSATION
How Severino went from afterthought to stud prospect to bust to ace
HE GOT the Yankees’ attention in the first place, Luis Severino believes, because of his willingness to embrace the unconventional. He held the Yankees’ faith at a nadir, we all saw, because of his employers’ willingness to look past what was right in front of them.
Now those risks on both sides are poised to produce the biggest reward so far. Or, even in the worst-case scenario, plant a seed for what’s to come in this new Yankees era.
The 23-year-old will continue his first full year in the big leagues by starting the Yankees’ do-or-die American League wild-card game against the Twins — and fellow Dominican Republic native Ervin Santana — Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium. He became Joe Girardi’s slam-dunk choice for this responsibility thanks to a brilliant campaign featuring a 2.98 ERA and 230 strikeouts against 51 walks in 193¹/₃ innings.
“He’s an exciting guy, especially at his age to be doing what he’s doing,” Donny Rowland, the Yankees’ director of international scouting, said in a recent telephone interview. “Now he’s pretty good, and as long as he stays healthy, the future is bright.”
Severino’s path to this mountaintop featured two forks in the road, two flash points, at which his career could have taken notably different turns. The first occurred in 2010, as an amateur. The second in 2016, as a major leaguer. To fully appreciate how Severino and the Yankees wound up here, an iconic franchise rebranding itself with a fire-balling ace to accompany a core of dynamic position players, let’s revisit these two moments.
1. 2010, Dominican Republic
The best young Dominican players sign with a team on the first July 2 after their 16th birthday. Severino turned 16 on Feb. 20, 2010, and that July 2 came and went without him finding an employer. That came as no surprise. Severino’s fastball topped out at 83 mph or so, he said, and moving from his home of Sabana de la Mar to an academy in Bavaro didn’t pay immediate dividends. One day, a coach at the academy who went by the handle “Veterano” — Severino doesn’t remember the man’s actual name — devised a new plan. As Severino wrote last month in a piece for The Players’ Tribune, recalling the coach’s words, “You’re going to run for 30 minutes every morning, and then take a softball and play catch with it and throw it as far as you can each time. Long toss. No baseballs. All softballs.” “I was desperate to do something,” Severino told The Post. “I was trying anything to throw harder.” He followed hi s coach’s instructions. For two weeks, he threw only a softball. Then he picked up a baseball for his next tryout, and his fastball rose up to 92-93 mph. By the time he turned 17, he said, he could throw 97. Barring a trip to the Domini- can, confirming the precise details of Severino’s origin story can be challenging, and those details — going up by 10 mph in two weeks! — raise the eyebrows of some veteran baseball folks. However, the practice itself of throwing softballs to build up arm strength draws a general endorsement.
“That’s really productive,” said Rick Peterson, the former pitching coach for the Mets, A’s and Brewers who is widely respected for his knowledge of pitching biomechanics. “There hasn’t been a comprehensive study of that, but it’s something I would throw out there to our pitchers. I really liked long-tossing with the softball, and I liked it when I shifted over to the baseball. The ball felt so small.”
“I have heard of it, yes,” Rowland said of the practice. “I’ve seen it more with Cubans than Dominicans. Before Cubans will showcase, we’ll see them warming up with a softball, sometimes a weighted softball.”
Peterson noted that former Yankee Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, a Cuba native, used a softball extensively in his workouts with the Mets.
“I’m 90 percent sure” that the softball drill accounted for the velocity gain, Severino said.
The uptick made Severino a more attractive prospect to major league teams, and he got the Yankees’ attention in the fall of 2011. Rowland saw him pitch twice, once in November and once in December. He quickly labeled Severino as “Flecha Arriba,” the Spanish phrase for “arrow up.”
“The first time I saw him, he was 89 to 93 with a big finish on his fastball at the plate, and three out of five sliders made the hair on your arm stand up,” said Rowland, who credited Yankees scout Juan Rosario for alerting the team brass to Severino. “The second time, he showed up sick as a dog. He had a fever and was throwing up between innings in the dugout. But he gutted it out. We liked his mound presence and his demeanor. He was flashy, really strong and confident.”
The Yankees had company; the Rockies had gone after Severino aggressively enough, the pitcher recalled, that some people from his village purchased Rockies hats. Yet when Severino excelled under duress that December at the Yankees’ Dominican academy, “I told the guys, ‘Do not let him out of the complex,’ ” Rowland said. “‘Whatever it takes, let’s get it done.’ ” It took a $225,000 signing bonus for Severino to sign with the club he loved as a child.
2. The Bronx, 2016
Brian Cashman authorized the signing of Severino, but someone at that signing-bonus level — as opposed to a Latin American player getting seven figures — “is not going to be on my radar,” the Yankees’ general manager conceded.
Severino worked his way up to everyone’s radar. Strong work up the Yankees’ minor league ladder earned him a promotion to the majors in August 2015, at age 21. And he helped the Yankees secure the top AL wild card with a 2.89 ERA in 11 starts, striking out 56 and walking 22 over 62¹/₃ innings.
Then came 2016, which was expected to be his first full major league season, and it didn’t go at all like anyone hoped. He put up a 7.46 ERA in his first seven starts, went on the disabled list with a right triceps strain and went from there back to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. When he returned to the major leagues, he bounced between the Yankees’ starting rotation and their bullpen, and he turned out to be very good in the latter role, tallying an 0.39 ERA in 11 games totaling 23¹/₃ innings — a stark contrast to his 8.50 ERA in 11 starts.
Nevertheless, Cashman said, the organization never seriously considered converting Severino to a full-time reliever.
“His 11 starts in ’16 does not make you forget what he did in the 11 starts in ’15, at the big-league level in a pennant race,” Cashman said. “Since he emerged in 2012 in his pro career, at every level, he had tremendous stuff. … The only aberration was ’16. So it was more like, ‘What did he do differently?’ ”
He lifted more weights in the 2015-16 offseason, the Yankees determined. Said Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild: “I thought he came in [for 2016] too strong in the upper body, and I think it really affected him. His feel for the baseball, command of the baseball.”
“This year, I wasn’t paying attention to [upper-body strength],” Severino said. “I was just working my lower body and did a lot of running.”
He credits his improved feel for the ball and flexibility, as well as an offseason tutorial with Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez in the Dominican, for his dramatically improved changeup.
So here he is, ready for his moment in the spotlight. And this winter, after sufficient rest, he’ll pick up a softball and throw only that for a month before shifting to a baseball. That has been his offseason drill ever since “Veterano” introduced him to the softball. Something seems to be working; Severino’s average fastball velocity of 97.6 mph ranked as the best among all pitchers who qualif ied for the ERA title, as per FanGraphs.
“I feel very proud of myself,” Severino said, reflecting on his season, which saw him finish 14-6.
It’s a personal and organizational triumph. Now all Severino and the Yankees have to do is convert that into a triumph over the Twins, and this rebranding will really take off.