Yankees right-hander Luis Severino continues to make his way back from Tommy John surgery, with a pair of big checkpoints on the horizon. Manager Aaron Boone told reporters (including Pete Caldera of The Bergen Record) that Severino will toss a three-inning simulated game today, and if all goes well, Severino is expected to begin a rehab assignment on Sunday.
Severino underwent his TJ procedure in February 2020, so while his recovery is taking a bit longer than the usual timeline of 13-15 months, that probably isn’t unexpected given that Severino also missed most of the 2019 season. Shoulder and lat problems limited Severino to only 20 1/3 combined innings in the regular season and postseason in 2019, so the Yankees will have essentially gone almost two and a half seasons without Severino before he is finally able to get back onto a big league mound.
It’s been a tough haul for a pitcher who looked like one of the better arms in the sport in 2017-18, when Severino made two All-Star teams and posted a 3.18 ERA/3.26 SIERA and 28.8% strikeout rate over 384 2/3 innings. The Yankees haven’t usually worked out contract extensions in recent years, but they were impressed enough by Severino’s work to lock him up on a four-year, $40MM deal covering the 2019-22 seasons, with a $15MM club option ($2.75MM buyout) for 2023. Between the shoulder issues and the Tommy John surgery, of course, Severino has barely pitched since signing that extension.
Given the long layoff, it might be optimistic to assume that Severino will immediately look like a front-of-the-rotation arm upon his return, though the Yankees will happily take anything close to that form. New York has gotten strong results from its rotation as a whole this season, but Corey Kluber will now be sidelined through July and Jameson Taillon (who is himself returning from a long Tommy John rehab) has been inconsistent over 42 2/3 innings.
big yankee fan but this team has second round potential at best
If they get in they’re in. It’s largely up in the air after that. The idea that you can look at a team and judge how it’s destined to do in a future playoff series is wrong. Anything can happen in any seven game series.
They won’t even get in
Severino, Britton, and Gittens could be the saviors this year. Maybe Andujar too. Chances of any kind of trade are slim, because every team will try to hold up the Yankees for every top 10 prospect.
I would not underestimate the Yankees chances of winning a Wild Card slot. And their chances of winning the WC game with Cole on the mound. However, if they are successful, I do not believe it will be due to two guys currently on the IL-60 (Severino and Britton), a career minor leaguer getting his first taste of AAA (Gittens) and a guy with a negative WAR (Andujar).
Gittens breakthrough came in 2019; he would have been in AAA last year, had there been a minor league season. But he lost a year — but now 27, is worth (in Voit’s extended absence) is with a two week audition in the Bronx.
@Capt Thurman
You say every team will try to ‘hold up’ those poor, unfortunate Yankees. Well, I guess you mean just like those Yanks held up the Cubs in 2016 for Gleyber, or how the Yanks held up other teams over the years – only then to just ‘buy back’ the same, or similar talent.
I’ve never been a Yankee hater. But please, don’t use the Yankees as a case for sympathy.
I agree with Dogbone. Also the Yankees have self imposed the luxury tax as a salary cap. That limited their off season flexibility and limits what they think they can do now.
@Dogbone Epstein got his man in Chapman and won a Cubs ring as a result. I’d say it’s a fair trade. Did he make any concerted effort to retain Chapman after the season?
Not my point ‘creature’. I just can’t take a Yankee fan complaining about being taken advantage of, in a trade. Personally I think Cashman is just a so-so GM, but he’s got the advantage of a bulging bank account.
@Dogbone No argument there.
All the pitching in the world can’t overcome the collection of sub .200 hitters that the Yankees have. On any given day 1/3 of the lineup is hitting under .200.
Where is Jim Mora when you need him, “Playoffs, What Playoffs?”
D’accord @Pernell.
Now – for better or worse – I made the transition from batting average to OPS quite awhile ago.
But.
We have 4 guys with an OPS over .700. Judge, Stanton, Urshela, & the much maligned Phat Sancho. After that it’s a slew of guys under .700 & even under .600.
That is simply untenable.
Just putting way too much pressure on the staff.
Glad I had work stuff to do today as that was another abysmal “performance”.
Offense. Offense. Wherefore art thou Offense?
Wherefore means why not where…as in why are you Romeo (ie my sworn enemy)…so this is akin to saying why are you offense…
Guess that’ll mark the last time I try to work some Shakespeare into a post.
It sure sounded right.
Somewhere in Heaven one of my Jesuit teachers is thoroughly disappointed.
OPS is superior to average, but average still counts. You need to occasionally get a few hits to scrounge up a run, not attributable to Judge or Stanton.
@pernell
You are correct sir! These f****** guys are killing me
Tampa Bay is rolling. They might have a sizable lead by the time Severino returns. Austin Meadows (8, 28, .979 OPS) is making a run at Player of the Month.
Dont worry… the yankees will win a game and then all the media will say how great they are. Might be a while, but next win
.. guaranteed.
Blame the Media, a popular board game brought to you by Muricans who just can’t get over their disappointment.
Pretty interesting phenomenon.
You claim to loathe the Yanks. Yet you are on every Yankee thread posting & also watch all of our games.
Look.
You’re not fooling any of us. It’s pretty obvious you love us & this somehow embarrasses you. It’s cool, bro.
Many better men than you (& indeed myself) have cheered the pinstripes.
So…Go Yanks! Right, my man?
When I’m done taking a dump, I wipe my butt with a yankees cap… “go ON the yankees my man”.
That doesn’t seem like it would work very well. & the same one?
Jeeez…you absolutely must smell like poop, @Gibsonfan.
@Ducky Agreed. He’s practically on every Yankees post. Just come out of the pinstriped closet already. It’s OK to be a fan of more than one team.
Your boy Ozuna still can’t play defense.
Cool story, brah. Tell us again how he wont sign with a NL team because hes a DH.
Do you even watch baseball?
Never said that. You said Ozuna was a decent defender. We know you watch nothing connected to baseball. Stop while you are behind. Even your lies are bad.
Ozuna played 48 games in the braves outfield… zero errors… positive run differential…
Do you even watch baseball?
LOL
Really MLBTR? This makes 8 posts exclusively about Yankees in 6 days. (Not counting reposts). Does everyone in NY live in 10×10 apartments and have nothing better to do? What about the many other teams who haven’t had a single post about them in same time frame? I guess they don’t count.
Accept who you are and, and rename the site NYTR.
Whoa.
That’s over 1 a day. Out of…what?,15? 20?
So perhaps some “extra” coverage*. Or – ya know – it just could’ve worked out like that.
But I do like the NYTR idea. Hoping it will also include the Giants.
You’re a problem solver @dennyd.
I like that.
*wondering if you can provide a single team name that has received no coverage in the past 6 days. Bet you can’t.
Not sure what your saying with the “1 a day” comment. Since I’ve made this point several times in the past.
Let me give you a simple comparison:
Yankees last 6 days: 8 posts + 4 reposts = 12
Rays last 6 days: 1 post + 0 reposts = 1
Easy to check my numbers.
Rays have made far more noise than Yankees of late. Hence should get more coverage. If your next point is they are playing great, therefore don’t have as many issues, then check Cincinnati. The Reds suck and have same results.
NYTR is real name of this place.
Oh.
You’ve “made this point several times in the past”.
I see.
So it’s your standard. Your rallying point, as such. Your cause, if you will.
Well, I shan’t get in the way of all that.
Please.
Do carry on, sir. This is important work & a real benefit to the entire board. Please keep us updated on this ongoing situation.
Thanks, D!
@dennyd, welcome to Yankee nation! All fans, haters and trolls treated fairly. And thank you for the long-term no cost lease in your head.
Thank you for pointing this out. I have complained many times also. When the pandemic hit, mlbtr started a series of what will the team do with no baseball. They covered the yankees, red sox and dodgers and then stopped because the noticed the story was the same with each team.
Whenever mlbtr describes a yankee, they need to add some adjective that excites the prepubescent yankee fan… like “smashing” or “bashing” and my favorite… “rookie of the year runner-up”.
Mlbtr writers deny any bias, but it’s pretty obvious who they have a hard on for.
Ahem. That’s “Mr. Rookie of the Year Runner-up”. Thank you.
I can’t wait for the Yankees sign Delino DeShields post. That should be good for a 2 day run.
@Bob There are plenty of lesser alternatives if you’re so unhappy with this site. No gun to the head.
“I have complained many times also.” – BobGibsonfan.
I bet that’s right, @BleacherCreature.
I rarely look at this site any more… this is not a trade rumor site. I know mlbtr misses me. They never had to beg for subscribers before. LOL
Look at all the idiots that wasted money on a trade rumors site that doesnt offer any trade rumors.
I, for one, don’t, Bob. You have nothing ever constructive to contribute. Plenty of other “free” sites have requested for member contributions. Others have placed permanent paywalls to weed out users like you.
I’m actually not here much lately (it’s the building season) but every thread I read, you are on, @fan. So if this is “rarely” for you I cannot even begin to imagine how you define “moderately” or (heavens forbid) “frequently”.
Mercy.
& the membership was a whopping…what?, 30 bucks? I tip more than that when I take my girlfriend out for lunch.
Covid was hurting the advertising revenue here & Fangraphs. Common sense. These are my baseball communities & I have absolutely no qualms about helping them continue to give myself & a lot of other interesting baseball crazies somewhere to talk with each other.
But then it seems fairly obvious that you & I see the world much differently. Which is fine. It takes all kinds, uh?
10×10 apartments?
Assuming that is a thing, which I assure you it is not (is that what they say in the comic books you read?), best part about those 10×10’s (assuming they exist), they’re worth well more than wherever you are posting from. And it’s not close psf. Look it up, I’ll wait.
Yankees have hit a dry spell, no denying it. Numbers don’t lie. They have some stuff to figure out, that people care about (hence posts). But please don’t attempt to insult NYers with a nonsensical comment about apartments when you’ve clearly never been here, and most likely never left your state.
Try to be quiet when adults are talking.
Yankees will be fine, good luck with your post counting comps. Sounds like a hoot, and definitely how I want to spend my 3 day weekend.
@ducky – you are a class act, unlike yourself I have no patience for peasants.
Oooo, “peasants”… how 13th century of you. You probably were looking down your nose when you said it.
Elitist.
I will say the only validation I need is 35-20, +5.5, and the best record in MLB. Keep not posting about the best team in the AL and everybody will continue to underestimate them. The Rays are now the true kings of New York.
Hey Brooklyn welcomes you with open arms! NYC could probably support a third baseball team since your team wants out of their stadium so badly.
Hoping that he doesn’t turn out to be another Chien-Ming Wang in terms of longevity
The problem in baseball is that hitters are all three true outcome hitters. There’s no improvement on it the Yankees team look like how the orioles and blue jays try to build their teams in middle 2010s with all power top to bottom. The year for contact hitters is gone the way you hear OPS been used for everything. If you take the homeruns away what type of hitter you have there? Singles do more damaged than a walk. Any time you walk a guy was to get to the worst hitter, but you can pitch to any of the Yankees hitters and thrown them breaking balls all day and they look stupid out there because like the Clint Eastwood movie “can’t hit a curveball”. Everyone relying on heat to get past games, you did a stat of how many breaking balls are being used to today hitters you’ll see the numbers are low. Baseball is trying to get rid of shifts, lower the mound just to boost offense. But why blame how much there’s so much statistics in the game they are judging the hitter for all the faults in their swing and where they hit it. So now left hand hitters have 6 guys on the right to block the hit or right hand hitters with 3 man on the left side. Until you start seeing guys like Ichiro, Tony Gwynn, Derek jeter guys who don’t have a shift to their names because all they look for is where to placed the ball to hit, because you can’t shift on them because they put the ball anywhere they want it.
Hey, let’s change the rules so that the people who do things wrong will actually be doing them right. I think that’s the current Republican platform, sadly. Oh well.
I do miss the old game. It was fun when a batter swung so hard, he fell down. Now it’s all they do, they just don’t fall down. They injure their oblique or their hamstring or their fragile ego or their binky. Oh well.
The subheading for this article could be: “Yankee fans can stop imagining trades for a starting pitcher.”
Where’s the obnoxious yankee fan (I know, too vague) that was saying the Rays wouldn’t sniff anything above last place in the AL East, bc we lost Snell and Morton? I believe it was yank4life or something similar. Tell it the Rays still own the Yankees, please.
Yank4life? Sounds like a shady website.
O cmon, even Rays fans didn’t expect this level of performance
Absolutely not true. I told anybody and everybody that the Rays over for wins was the surest bet in baseball and that the sport was sleeping on them….again.
Next year when everyone underestimates them, I’ll remind you again how talented, well run and good they’ll be and you can tell me how much of a homer I am. Then I’ll be right and you’ll still not get it.
Same here. I predicted this level of performance and then some. Wait til our studs in AAA get called up. You may have heard of a couple of them…
GO RAYS!!!
A day at MLBTR
WRITER:
Boss, I got this story about a pitcher that’s hurt and hes going to start throwing simulated games.
EDITOR:
Wow, a guy that’s hurt might be coming back one day… who cares?
WRITER:
But boss… it’s a yankee.
EDITOR:
How fast can you get it done? I want this to be feature article. Drop everything else you are working on.
WRITER:
Got it boss. I knew you’d like it.
27… 27… 27… 27…
Oh boy, it sure is fun reading the posts on this story. By the way, I don’t need any stories about the Rays as long as they’re winning just about every game. And getting to read about the endless parade of injuries is getting old but it’s still informative. Except sometimes for Dr. Boone, who I think must have been in on the writing of the Holy Grail. “He’s not dead yet.” OK, thank you Dr. Boone. Anyway, I’m as much of a yankee hater as the next person, but it’s a 162 game season and while there is great joy in a yankee loss, the race has a long way to go. We’re somewhere between miles 8 and 9, I think that’s in Queens, and there’s plenty of miles to go in this season. NYCM finisher, 1981-1983. Boston Marathon qualifier, 2004. What took so long? It’s really hard to BQ.
Fire Boone
Boone is a puppet. Fire Cashman.
Fire Hal?
Yuck, Badfinger. I had an interview with the band canceled in November 1983 because Tom Evans committed suicide two days earlier. Thankfully, my Writing for Publication professor considered it a good excuse for not turning in the assignment.
Great band. Pete was a gifted songwriter. Tom and Joey wrote some good tunes too. Joey is still out there playing the Badfinger catalog with an excellent backing band.