SOME SEVY LIFTING
Struggling star gives a glimmer of hope he can resurrect season
BOSTON — Gosh, how the Yankees would love it if Fenway Park served as the opening scene for their season-saving saga: How Sevy Got His Groove Back. Did Luis Severino shake off his blahs Friday night here in The Fens, a 4-1 loss to the Red Sox masking his best start of his last four or five? Why speculate? His next start should come Wednesday night against the White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field (worst ballpark name ever). Yet if you desperately want to search for signs of hope about the Yankees’ ace, you could do worse than note his postgame chutzpah.
“If I’m going to hit somebody,” Severino said, wearing an annoyed look, “I’m not going to miss.”
Severino’s first pitch of the night went up and in to Mookie Betts, knocking the Red Sox’s leadoff hitter on his derriere and setting in motion an odd sequence of events: Homeplate umpire Adam Hamari initially did nothing, then — upon prompting from crew chief Phil Cuzzi — issued warnings to both sides, at which point Boston manager Alex Cora, convinced Severino threw a purpose pitch in response to his starter Rick Porcello’s hitting Brett Gardner in the top of the first inning, stormed the field and quickly earned his first career ejection as a skipper.
Whew! The Red Sox scored three runs in the first inning off Severino, and from there, behind Porcello’s one-hit, no-walks, nine-strikeout mastery, the contest went pedal to the metal until Gardner’s game-ending groundout to Xander Bogaerts just 2 hours and 15 minutes after proceedings began.
That proved a bad development for the Yankees, who now trail the Red Sox by 7 ¹/2 games in the AL East (tying their season low point), yet it marked a good turn in that Severino hung around for 5 2/3 innings, shielding the bullpen some after Thursday night’s 15-7 debacle of a loss. The right-hander looked his most competitive — and clocked his longest outing — since he beat the Red Sox on July 1 with 6 2/3 innings of shutout ball.
“I feel very good,” he said. “Like I always say, right now it’s raining. A couple of things are going bad. But it’s going to stop raining sometime.”
Maybe not Saturday, when Chance Adams will make his major league debut (weather permitting) in less than inviting circumstances. However, as the Yankees privately resolve themselves to the reality that they won’t win the division, they’ll be best prepared for October if Severino can revert to his status as the slam-dunk choice to start the AL wild-card game.
“I just loved the way he competed tonight,” Aaron Boone said. “Pretty high with the pitch count (115), just the state of knowing we needed to get a little bit deeper into this game. … And I feel like he found some things tonight. I just wanted to let him know how proud of the effort I was of him and the way he competed. And that this is a step forward for him. Hopefully something that he can take into his next start.”
Austin Romine, who caught Severino’s previous start, when the 24-yearold lasted just 4 ¹/3 innings and gave up six runs to the terrible Royals, explained the difference as “the life on his fastball. He had that jump, that electric fastball that was coming out. The changeup was playing up. I think he was playing with his slider again.”
Boone and Romine also expressed their surprise that the teams received warnings.
“They scored how many runs [Thursday] night, so we’ve got to pitch inside,” Romine said. “There was no intent.”
“First pitch of the game, I got a [bleeping] warning, it’s going to be surprising, of course,” Severino said. “… Mookie’s a great guy. If I’m going to throw at somebody, I’m not going to throw to the head. That’s not right.” Is that indignation, rather than the resignation of his recent postgame news conferences, anything on which the Yankees can hang their hats? It’s different, at least. On this night, the Yankees had no choice but to grasp onto whatever positive developments they could find.