Free agent right-hander Luis Severino is drawing plenty of attention around the league, reports Brendan Kuty of The Athletic. As many as eight teams have made their interest known, though Kuty says the Yankees aren’t believed to be one of them.
Severino will be an interesting bounceback candidate in this winter’s market since he previously was one of the best pitchers in the game but his recent struggles should significantly hamper his market. Over 2017 and 2018, he made 63 starts and logged 384 2/3 innings with a 3.18 earned run average. He struck out 28.8% of batters faced and walked just 6.2% of them, while also keeping 45.8% of balls in play on the ground. FanGraphs calculated him as worth 11 wins above replacement over that two-year span, with only four pitchers ahead of him in that category: Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, Jacob deGrom and Corey Kluber.
Going into 2019, the Yankees locked him up with a four-year, $40MM contract with a $15MM option for 2023. Unfortunately, he was injured for most of the next three seasons. In 2019, he was only able to make three starts due to shoulder and lat injuries, then Tommy John surgery wiped out his 2020 and most of his 2021 season. In 2022, he again dealt with lat issues but was able to throw 102 innings over 19 starts with a 3.18 ERA, then a couple more starts in the postseason.
The Yanks felt good enough with that return to trigger the option but 2023 didn’t go well. Another lat strain kept him out of action until May and an oblique strain ended his season in September. In between, he tossed 89 1/3 innings with a 6.65 ERA. His strikeout rate dropped to 18.9%, after being at 27.7% last year, which was pretty close to his peak.
Despite that rough season, it’s understandable that teams would still be intrigued, though it appears the Yankees may not be one of them. They will likely pursue some kind of starting pitcher, based on their current rotation. Gerrit Cole is likely to grab a Cy Young next week based on his excellent campaign, but there’s little certainty beyond that. Both Carlos Rodón and Nestor Cortes are coming off injury-marred seasons. Michael King showed promise in his move from the bullpen to the rotation but he’s still fairly inexperienced as a starter. Clarke Schmidt could be in the back end after posting a 4.64 ERA this year. The Yanks aren’t likely to be satisfied with that group and could perhaps circle back to Severino later but he may not be the first name on the list.
This winter’s market has some less risky pitchers to bank on, but guys like Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, Aaron Nola and Yoshinobu Yamamoto will likely require nine-figure guarantees. Sonny Gray, Eduardo Rodriguez and Shota Imanaga might come in just under the nine-figure line. Not every team will be willing to shop on Main Street and some will be combing the beach looking for buried treasure.
MLBTR’s Top 50 Free Agents predicted a contract of one year and $14MM for Severino this winter. Assuming his market is indeed in that range, plenty of teams will be willing to take the risk, particularly if they have a plan of how to get the best results out of him. Despite the injuries, Severino’s fastball averaged 96.5 mph in 2023. That’s a bit down from 2018, when he was at 97.6, but not by much. It’s also higher than the 96.3 mph he averaged in 2022, when he was still quite effective. His slider saw a bigger drop, averaging 84.6 mph in 2023 whereas it would sit 88-89 prior to his lengthy injury absences. But again, he was still getting good results in 2022 with a slider averaging 85.1 mph.
Kuty relays that Severino is back to throwing, having rehabbed from the oblique strain that ended his most recent campaign. His recent track record makes him a significant wild card, but one that will surely be played at some point in the coming months.
Everyone is going to kick the tires on this guy. The upside is too tempting not to at least give him a one-year prove me deal.
Really not surprised at all. Nice power arm that any team in the league would be happy to have.
IE NYY could have traded him last year but told fans no one wanted him ♂️ #fireCashman
Not the same at all. Having to give up assets vs being able to sign a guy on a bounce back deal are two different scenarios. He’s also almost certainly going to make less this year than he did last year as well, so if New York did find an interested club, they probably would have had to eat most of his contract as well to even get a decent lottery type prospect.
Who’ve never been wrong. Cashman had a deal in place with Arizona for Severino last season, but Hal rejected it. So…
NYY could have traded him last year but told fans no one wanted him
=========================
He had a 7.49/6.26 ERA/FIP at the deadline. How many teams were lining up for that?
Arizona
Sevy to the Mets
I can’t think of a more Mets move
Sevy is forever cool with me. Wish him the best of luck wherever he lands.
Same. He’s had a rough several years but he was 1 of the best pitchers in the AL for a couple seasons and was a big part of that 2017 team that was 1 game away from going to the World Series.
I don’t see why the Yankees can’t bring him back.
If Severino needs a change of scenery, fine. But Why not a contract from the team he knows best? I hadn’t heard of any bad blood within the locker room or in the manager’s office. If anyone else knows of any, please spill.
Severino is the single reason the Yankees failed to bring in a #2 behind Cole for four years… until Rodon last year. And that so far has gone similarly.
His numbers and recent injury history sound like Zack Wheeler before he signed with the Phillies.
That’s select company if his upside looks like Wheeler.
I see some differences. Zack Wheeler’s injury issues all stemmed from a TJ surgery from which he was slow to recover and had some setbacks. Severino has had all variety of seemingly different injuries. And Wheeler was actually healthy and pitching well for the Mets for two full years before going to the Phils.
A more appropriate comparison than Zach Wheeler may be with Lucas Giolito. Career numbers favor Severino slightly, but the more recent injury history favors Giolito.
I wonder what everyone thinks. Would you take Giolito on a longer term contract or Severino on a shorter term or pillow contract?
2 totally different pitchers. I watched all of Wheeler’s career as a Met and have watched Sevy’s whole career as a Yankee. Wheeler has definitely much more of a feel to the way he pitches. Even with the Mets. He can add and subtract with his stuff. Sevy has always been a pure stuff guy if he doesn’t have it he doesn’t make adjustments and now that he’s losing a few ticks he hasn’t and I really don’t see him making the adjustments that Wheeler has made. Wheeler has always been pretty durable aside from those basically 2 seasons he lost from TJS. Sevy has lost his slider and his best fastball without that he’s in trouble. Other then pitching in New York to start their careers and both throwing hard I really don’t see the comparison.
If Severino earns $100M off promise and potential and flashes of excellence while being mostly injured and ineffective across the bulk of his career, I’ll be oddly fine with that. He seems like an immensely likable, good dude who’s had some really bad luck and some predictable issues from wear and tear due to being a workhorse the first few years of his career.
A 1 year/$14M deal w/ a $21M club option, an $11M player option and a $1M buyout seems reasonable.
I don’t get where you came up with immensely likeable from. He fleeced the Yankees sitting on the injured list making 40m over 4 years. If he was a good Samaritan he’d give that money back to the Yankee organization
Fleeced? He was up for arbitration. They could have signed him one year at a time. Also it was enough of a team friendly deal that if he intentionally lied about injuries to just not play while collecting paychecks, he basically gave up a potential second extension probably worth north of $100M to collect the first $55M without playing? Who would do that?
All I’m saying is he gave nothing back to the team in return for his paychecks he received sitting on the bench. I don’t get what arbitration has to do with anything
It has everything to do with it- you’re mad at a guy for being injured- medically confirmed through x-rays and doctor and trainer diagnosis.
The Yankees did not have to pick up his option. That was their choice.
Lets say he had gone year to year instead- as in, the Yankees declined to offer him any sort of multi-year extension, something they undoubtedly initiated themselves.
If they offered him 4 years/$40M w/ a $15M club option, it means they assumed he’d cost more than that going year to year- that it would have been like $7.5M, $11M, $15M, 20M and then he’d be headed to free agency and potentially command upwards of $30M per season. The Yankees basically tried to offer him that approximate amount of money stretched over an extra year to keep the AAV down, assuming he’d live up to the deal.
They also could have gone year to year, he gets injured, stays injured and they get him for 4 years and minimum salary increases, starting at just $7.5M, only going up to $8M, etc. or they DFA him or something and they save a ton of money.
But they did extend him.
That’s on the Yankees, not on Severino.
The number of players that have signed big money one year contracts or short term extensions to cover arbitration or long term extensions to forego arbitration and didn’t live up to them or couldn’t stay healthy and weren’t asked to or expected to give up the guaranteed salary over that…
The whole idea of deals like this is that it’s a trade off- if the player sucks or is so injured they can’t play, they make a guaranteed small fortune. If the player lives up to the deal, they likely were more valuable than the deal and were a bargain for the team, so when that $15M option gets picked up, the player and the team knows the player is being forced to leave tens of millions on the table and the team is getting a heavily discounted value for that extra year of service.
Worst case scenario to the team is that the player is fine or isn’t bad on the deal but doesn’t exceeds its value and the worst case scenario for the player is that their performances far exceed the value of the deal and they realize they left a ton of money on the table, even in arbitration and are losing out on tens of millions in free agency and will be one year older with one more year of wear and tear on them to potentially lower their value or limit their contract length or that they are injured just in time for once they reach free agency.
It’s all a gamble. The Yankees and Severino lost.
What did you expect him to do? Who has ever returned money to a team for being injured? That’s the inherent risk in signing any player to a long term deal.
This is a clown question bro.
Someone making millions and being injured and still happily accepting the money instead of forfeiting the salary is not the characteristics of an immensely likeable person. In fact it’s quite the opposite. Those are the kinds of athletes who have ruined the integrity of the game. Breaking a finger nail and being out for 2 weeks straight and still collecting their entire paychecks for doing absolutely nothing. Him donating the money or forfeiting the salary would be the right thing to do. You don’t work, you don’t get paid. So why should someone making millions be any different? It’s all greed
Look, it’s not the players’ faults these contracts are guaranteed. I’d also like to point out that when players have actually effectively stolen money from their teams- like Yoenis Cespedes on the Mets and like Ellsbury on the Yankees- where they do have a legitimate injury, initially and then recover and despite being fully recovered, they use that as an excuse to keep avoiding playing and to basically sit at home and hang out, collecting a paycheck for $2 million every couple of weeks for half the year, yeah it’s absolutely fair that they’re proven to be committing fraud and they were reprimanded accordingly.
The Yankees tried to stop payment on the balance of Ellsbury’s deal and to file a grievance against him for effectively committing fraud and dereliction of contractual obligations and the Mets successfully did this for a large portion of Cespedes’ deal and got him to come back and play full time to not lose the remainder of what was on the deal.
So if Severino was doing that, the Yankees would have found out and released him outright and then filed paperwork against him to stop payment on his salaries and even potentially require him to repay some chunk of that money. They didn’t do that- that would indicate that he wasn’t committing fraud, he was just really unlucky after being a workhorse for a few years and the wear and tear caught up to him.
Also if this whole ‘if you don’t work you have to pay the money back’ concept was true, the number of players who are well known to somehow stay healthy the year before going into free agency and then suddenly being constantly injured and unavailable until it’s time for their next round of free agency still get big deals because they produce enough when they are healthy.
There’s even an entire concept around ‘quiet quitting’ where people mentally check out of their job and show up just enough and do just enough busy work to not get outright fired, while basically avoiding 90% of their actual job duties, until someone catches on and fires them. A lot of people can collect a year or two worth of salary before that happens, because you had to work hard and be effective to get to the point that a high or acceptable salary was offered and guaranteed to you to the point that you felt you could sit back, collect paychecks and do little to no work.
Think about a guy like Byron Buxton- yes, $100M over 7 years, but with incentives that if healthy he could earn close to another $100M and when healthy he was playing so efficiently and effectively that a healthy version of Byron Buxton was worth potentially $45M a season. You really think he is giving up that extra $75M in incentives related to him staying healthy or that going into that contract he wouldn’t have rather stayed on the field and actually received a contract that paid him like 10 years/$400M or something?
I mean, c’mon. If anybody didn’t commit that kind of fraud of indifference and apathy, it’s Severino.
Sure,,,why not? This is the definition of buying low on a previous Staff Ace and Cy Young candidate. Doubt he signs for more than 1 year though. Prol will get around $8m-$10M for a prove it season. Maybe more if a bidding war starts. Still not even 30 yet.
If Syndergaard can get $12 last year I think Severino can get similar or better. He’s the best bounce back option this offseason imo
Syndergaard got a little more than $12 lol
$13, close enough
I would literally try out anyone at Triple A before signing some of these sore arm pitchers
While you are 100% correct, what Eovaldi just did for Texas will make teams think twice. Eovaldi was injured every year with BOS (that’s 2020+2021+2022) and Texas took a chance (Eovaldi is 33 and Severino is 29) and he pitched the entire season and playoffs without getting injured once
Rangers might just be the team to offer him 2 years.
I think Evovaldi was even a injury risk when Boston got him for stretch run so I guess it’s a high stakes gamble
That’s not true bout Eovaldi though. He missed a month in August with a forearm strain.
he pitched the entire season and playoffs without getting injured once
================================
Eovaldi threw only 26.1 IPs after the AS break.
tggb
“While you are 100% correct,”
Why on earth do you think he’s 100% correct?
1 year prove it deal with the Rays, we will get back to old Sevy in no time
If Tampa signs him he will be a top free agent next year looking for over $100 million I would make it 2 year deal.
Theyll argue they cant afford him for 2 years lol. Congrats on the title, hope we raise our first next year!
Got to pay to play.
In your dreams.
If I was a team I would give him a 2 year deal it could be a steal Texas should sign him two years 30 million. If it works what a deal if not you tried the potential for great production is there.
Can see the Mets taking a flyer on him but I wouldn’t. Rather give Lucchesi a shot at #5 in the rotation.
Doesn’t matter. Most teams need 7 – 10 starting pitchers to get through the year, anyway. And while part of that is injuries, and equally big part is that the originally named #5 (and often #4) don’t perform.
#5 starters are like Bigfoot. A number of people say they’ve seen one, But there’s no proof that one actually exists.
In the prediction contest, I have Severino going to Cincinnati. They need pitching, but won’t spend on the very top guys. Severino is a good risk for the Reds…
He would definitely make Cincy more dangerous.
Or the Pirates for the same reasons
Seems like a candidate to have his pitching dissected by an astute coach/team, and reconstructed,
Orioles could take a flyer on him. He has more upside potential than Kyle Gibson has, and performing better than in 2023 seems very possible.
Hope he passes his physical, wherever he gets his deal.
Agreed. I generally like the Pirates pitching coaches in that regard, as they seem to have righted both Oviedo and Ortiz—although the jury is still out— where mechanics are concerned
I admit, I haven’t seen enough of Severino although his name is being bandied about a lot here.
With a two pitcher starting staff and three guys coming back from major surgeries, they need to spend but also choose wisely
Course they said that about Will Myers last year too…but ya I agree. I wouldn’t hate Severino on the Reds
Did Scott Boras write this article? Shopping on Main Street, combing the beach for buried treasure. Seem like analogies that come out of Boras’ mouth. Much like his recent one about not being in “contract hibernation” regarding the Polar Bear Pete Alonso.
I’m sure he didn’t, but what if he did say those things?
You have a problem with agents promoting their clients? It’s their job, and Boras does it especially well.
Many of us have a problem with your seemingly non stop snarky arrogance
I address the issues being discussed and offer my opinions.
If you have a point or opinion to express, please do so intelligently and without personal comments.
If you’re unable or unwilling to do that, go pound sand.
I already did express my opinion intelligently.
@refugee: But not without a personal attack.
Have a good time with your problem.
Probably…sure as hell seems he wrote the Free Agent predictions on this site. Some of those numbers were insanely high.
These articles are just useless. An agent makes up a number to create an impression of a market and it is reported as fact. Just report that this is based on a comment from the agent not confirmed.
This is why Boras is most dominant agent in sports.
Boras isn’t the issue – Kuty is. Passing along a completely unsubstantiated piece of gamesmanship on the part of a “source” who is certainly the player’s agent just to get the first tweet on the board isn’t journalism.
“Severino will be an interesting bounceback candidate…”
Say no more. Moreno has already ordered Minasian to go get him.
Have they scheduled the TJ surgery as well?
The Angels have the surgeon on retainer so hopefully he gets in soon so he can pitch by the middle of 2025 for us.
San Diego bound. 1 year – 14 million, plus incentives to push it to 18 million.
Sure, your Rock Star GM gives out dumb contracts like they’re candy……why not $20 Million…….he’ll most likely be on IL again for much of the year…..he’s a great addition to the bench conversations…….
He has a lat strain disorder. Kind of like players who chronically pull hamstrings.
He’d slot in nice with the O’s rotation. They’re at a spot where they’re looking for cost-effective upside vs. costly reliable floors (Lyles/Gibson).
Orioles should be the team playing at the top of the market this year. They have massive payroll flexibility and looks like a steady pipeline of players funneling in the next couple years. Go get stupid. I’d go after Ohtani and Yamamoto. Try to get one.
Yes. 1yr contract territory for sure. Older. Experienced. An Elias angle. But, probably not happening because of injury history. Lyles and Gibson were in Baltimore first and foremost because they were there to take the ball every 5th day … which they did. Sketchy if Sev can do this.
I would take him over German.
I can totally see him, Maeda, and Miley as the back end of the Padres rotation this year.
Would love to see if the Dodgers can work their magic on him.
Yes, they are the modern day pitching whisperers these days….how many of their staff was on the IL this year……yes, they really work wonders and would definitely turn Sevy around……LOL
Minor league contract?
Who are the eight teams?
Nine seasons. One career postseason win. ERA over 5,.
There you have it. Truth.
He looked like a top-5 pitcher at one point but the league adjusted and he didn’t reciprocate
What league adjusted to him…..after a couple of successful seasons up until 2019, he was continually and chronically hurt….no adjustments were necessary when he pitched……and he also looked 25 pounds too heavy too boot this past season so its no wonder he’s an injury risk………and hitters connected like it was batting practice……..he’s a chronic IL player….
Or TJ and lat strains… Then started throwing his SL less and his Cutter more. Any idea why?
I’m a Jays fan. I have nothing to gain, and it’s pure speculation.
I’m sure Sevey would be open to a lower than $15 mil 1 year deal. Yanks would be fools not to bring him back. Yanks were good to him, as far as I know they have a good relationship. $5 mil guaranteed with incentives. You can’t develope, invest and go thru the injury pains and then let him walk.
I like Cashman but he was a fool to trade Montgomery. Would love to have him back.