Luis Severino Is in a Better Place Than Last Year

NEW YORK — In the early going on Friday night, it appeared that Luis Severino would wind up among the rocks at whatever bottom the Mets had found in recent weeks. The 30-year-old righty has been one of the team’s top starters since moving across town following a dismal final season with the Yankees, but facing the Diamondbacks and former teammate Jordan Montgomery, Severino struggled early, surrendering three first-inning runs while burning through 28 pitches. His teammates picked him up, however, and he salvaged a respectable 97-pitch outing that helped the Mets string together their first back-to-back victories in over three weeks.

“A battle for him today, especially the first couple of innings,” said Mets manager Carlos Mendoza while noting that Severino had trouble reaching his usual velocity. “It was a night where he wasn’t at his best and still found a way to go back out for the sixth and kept us in the game.” Severino’s final line score — 5.1 innings, six hits, five runs (four earned), one walk, and four strikeouts — won’t be mistaken for a gem, but just getting that far felt like a major accomplishment given the way his evening began.

The Diamondbacks pounced upon Severino from the game’s first pitch, a 93-mph sinker on the outside edge that Corbin Carroll dumped into left field before taking second on a balk. Severino then hit Ketel Marte in the left leg and surrendered a 102-mph RBI single to Joc Pederson, with Marte taking third. Severino finally recorded his first out by striking out Christian Walker on a low-and-away sweeper, but Pederson stole second on the third strike, then took third when the next batter, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., threaded a 99-mph single through the left side of the infield, scoring Marte. Pederson came home when Jake McCarthy grounded to second base and beat the throw from shortstop Francisco Lindor, putting the Mets in a 3-0 hole before they’d swung a bat. Severino then fell behind Eugenio Suárez 2-0 before battling back and getting him to fly out to right.

It all seemed of a piece with the Mets’ recent misery. Since sweeping a pair of games from the Cardinals in St. Louis on May 6–7 to level their record at 18-18, they had gone 5-15, punctuated by a 1-8 skid from May 20–29. Facing the Dodgers — who arrived in Queens having lost five in a row — in a doubleheader on Tuesday, the Mets blew a 2-0 eighth-inning lead to lose the opener 5-2 in 10 innings, then were shut out on three hits in the nightcap. Worse than the sweep was a Wednesday from Hell, as they placed Edwin Díaz on the injured list due to shoulder impingement, saw Pete Alonso exit after being hit on the right hand, and then designated reliever Jorge López for assignment after he was ejected, threw his glove into the stands, and continued his meltdown amid a postgame media session that was partially lost in translation. In the wake of the López fiasco, whatever momentum the team had created with a players-only meeting and then a 3-2 victory over Arizona in Thursday’s series opener appeared to have quickly dissipated in Friday’s top of the first.

Fortunately for the Mets, their offense — which had scored more than three runs just three times in the preceding 10 games — came to life. Taking advantage of Montgomery’s wildness and lack of movement on a sinker that he later compared to batting practice fodder, they scored four runs via two walks, two singles, and a bases-clearing Starling Marte triple, just the their second three-bagger of the season.

After a clean second inning and another run from the Mets offense, Severino faced trouble again in the third, as Ketel Marte singled and Pederson reached on catcher interference. Walker grounded to Lindor, who flipped to Jose Iglesias — who was making his Mets debut after a roster shuffle — at second for the force, but Iglesias was offline with his throw to first base; Alonso, who escaped serious injury from Wednesday’s HBP, had to make a diving stop to keep the runners from advancing. Gurriel’s grounder to third baseman Mark Vientos produced another double play opportunity that was short-circuited by bad defense, this one resulting in a forceout at second, a throwing error by Iglesias, and a run scored. McCarthy lined out to Alonso to end the threat.

Severino pitched a 1-2-3 fourth, worked his way out of a two-on, no-out jam in the fifth. After Carroll singled and Marte walked, Severino induced Pederson to chase a low slider for strike three, survived a middle-middle 97-mph fastball that Walker flied to right, and got Gurriel to pop up an elevated 97-mph fastball. Severino finally departed after serving up a solo homer to Suárez in the sixth, by which time he had an 8-4 lead. A pair of ninth-inning homers by the Diamondbacks off Reed Garrett turned a 10-5 lead into a 10-9 one, but the Mets hung on for the much-needed win.

Severino averaged just 94.4 mph with his four-seamer and 94.1 mph with his sinker over the first two innings, both about 1.5 mph shy of his seasonal averages. “I was feeling a little down the first couple innings… like I was getting sick,” he said. “Low energy.” He said the team nutritionist provided him with some honey-flavored energy gummies, which gave him a boost and helped restore his velocity while his offense offset his early struggles. “The guys came hot today… I want to go out there and throw a shutout, but it was a fight today.”

The outing raised Severino’s ERA and FIP to 3.52 and 3.92, respectively. Though he’s been a very different pitcher from his heyday with the Yankees — more contact-oriented, with a reconfigured repertoire — he’s been the most reliable starter in a rotation that has been without Kodai Senga all season, and that looks drastically different from the Justin Verlander/Max Scherzer-led unit that the team took into last season. That may not be saying much given that Mets are now 24-35, playing at a 96-loss pace, but for Severino, it’s a welcome step forward from an all-too-forgettable 2023.

Signed to a one-year, $13 million deal — with another $2 million in incentives — in late November, Severino is with his first organization besides the Yankees, who signed him out of the Dominican Republic in 2011. A two-time All-Star who finished as high as third in the Cy Young voting, he has dealt with a nearly endless litany of injuries over the past half-decade; between shoulder inflammation (2019), Tommy John surgery (2020-21), and a pair of lat strains (2022 and ’23), he totaled just 40 starts and 209.1 innings over a five-season span. When he was available last year in a season bookended by a lat strain that delayed his debut until May 21 and an oblique strain that ended his season on September 8, he generally struggled, posting a 6.65 ERA and 6.14 FIP in 89.1 innings. He served up 2.32 homers per nine, and batters slugged .680 against his four-seamer, a problem that may have been owed to his tipping pitches with men on base.

Yet even amid that disastrous season, Severino averaged 96.5 mph with his four-seamer and had a few good outings that offered some hope. Most notably, he threw 6.2 innings of scoreless, one-hit ball against the Nationals on August 23, then followed up with seven shutout innings and a season-high eight strikeouts against the Tigers five days later.

The Mets saw enough to justify the investment. In joining them, Severino reunited with Mendoza, the Yankees’ bench coach from 2018–23, and bullpen coach José Rosado, who spent 2011–20 as a minor league pitching coach with the Yankees, working with Severino at multiple stops and staying in touch with the pitcher even while coaching for the Hanwha Eagles of the KBO last year. Pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, who came highly recommended by Yankees third base coach and former Mets manager Luis Rojas, has pointed to better health as a key driver of Severino’s resurgence. Hefner’s staff-wide emphasis on an increased use of the sinker — which the Mets are throwing 25% of the time, third in the majors and nearly double last year’s 12.9% rate — has paid particular dividends for Severino, who threw the pitch just 1% of the time in 2022 and 2.8% last year but is up to 20.3% this year. Earlier this month, according to Tim Britton of The Athletic, Severino spoke about the way the pitch has helped change his mindset:

“Before, when I was a little younger, I was thinking too much about striking everybody out. Right now, I’m just focused on getting people out and getting deep into the game. It’s more important to throw innings than to strike everybody out.”

“Just to have [the sinker] in my pocket that can help me get a groundball here, get a double play, get out of an inning with one pitch instead of striking out two guys… I was just thinking about how I can be more productive and save more pitches.”

Severino’s sinker, whose average velocity is on par with that of his four-seamer (95.7 mph for the former, 96.0 for the latter) has helped him throw a team-high 64 innings while nearly cutting his ERA in half from last season. He throws the pitch to lefties almost as often as he does his four-seamer, though against righties, he still favors the heater. He’s also added a sweeper; that pitch and the sinker together account for nearly 20% of his pitches to lefties and almost half of his pitches to righties:

Severino isn’t striking out nearly as many hitters as he used to; his current rate of 20% is barely up from last year’s career-low 18.9%, but down from his 27.7% in 2022 (and 27.2% for his career before ’23). His walk rate is a gaudy 10%, the second-highest mark of his career. Yet the new pitches are stifling hitters. Batters are hitting just .208 and slugging .358 in 57 plate appearances against the sinker while hitting it on the ground 56.3% of the time; they’re also chasing it outside the zone 39.6% of the time, and making worse contact when they do. And where they absolutely demolished his four-seamer last season, they’re scuffling against it this year. They’re not faring as well against his other secondary pitches either; his slider and sweeper are his best swing-and-miss offerings:

Thanks to his new pitch mix, Severino has had days where he’s been nearly unhittable, his stuff electric. In his third outing of the season, on April 12 against the Royals, he worked around four walks by allowing just one hit in five innings, a solo homer by Salvador Perez. On April 29, he no-hit the Cubs for seven innings before giving up a hit and a run in the eighth. On May 25, in the outing preceding Friday’s start, he no-hit the Giants for 5.2 innings before allowing a hit and a run. This being the Mets, somehow they lost those last two games nonetheless due to poor offensive and bullpen support.

Severino is doing a great job of avoiding hard contact. He’s hit career marks in groundball rate (51.1%) and home run rate (0.7 per nine) while cutting his barrel rate from 10.4% to 4.4%. Among pitchers with at least 80 innings last year and 30 this year, that six-point drop is the fourth-largest in the majors, with his 2.6-mph reduction in average exit velocity seventh. One look at his Statcast dashboard shows a pitcher in a much better place than last year, when all he had going for him was velocity:

With the Mets already down to just an 8.1% chance of making the playoffs — though somebody has to in the National League, where just five teams are playing .500 ball or better — there’s a pretty good chance they’ll be active in trading away big league talent ahead of the July 30 trade deadline. If they are, and if he remains healthy, Severino’s name is sure to come up. If he’s not the same pitcher that once dazzled for the Yankees, he’s back to being a good one.