Luis Severino, bullpen pitch shutout to push Mets past Marlins
Luis Severino of the Mets reacts during the fourth inning of a game against the Marlins at loanDepot park on Saturday in Miami, Fla. Credit: Getty Images/Megan Briggs
MIAMI — In perhaps the biggest moment of the Mets’ 1-0 win over the Marlins on Saturday, manager Carlos Mendoza deployed what quickly has become one of his signature moves.
A veteran pitcher was nearing the end of his outing. The other team was threatening to score with two outs. A reliever was ready and waiting in the bullpen. Mendoza visited the mound — but not necessarily to remove his pitcher from the game.
Instead, he just wanted to talk. He wanted to look Luis Severino in the eyes and hear the words come from his mouth, hear that he wanted another batter, a chance to finish what he started.
As Mendoza ambled toward the mound, Severino could see it in his gait and on his face. This was not a pitching change mound visit.
“I knew he was not going to take me out there,” said Severino, who has known Mendoza about as long as any Mets player, dating to their days as a player and coach, respectively, in the Yankees’ farm system. “I think it’s the history of knowing him, even the way he walks and everything. I was like, no, he’s not going to take me out. It’s a good, good chemistry.”
And so Mendoza left him in.
“I was pretty confident I was going to leave him out there, but I wanted to get his take,” Mendoza said. “I saw the velo — it was still holding up. The way he was executing pitches [did not suggest reason for concern]. And I knew he wanted it. But I wanted to make sure that that was the case. Right away when I got there, he was like, ‘Give me this one.’ All right, this is it, right here. Give me everything you got.”
Severino said: “He asked me how I was feeling. I said I got this, I got this, I got this guy here. He told me, this is your game, this is your inning here.”
Severino answered further by striking out Nick Gordon with runners on second and third, punctuating one of his best starts all season: six innings, two hits, no runs. He struck out seven and worked around three walks.
It was only his second scoreless performance this year.
Ten days after his most recent start — the All-Star break resulted in an extra-long layoff — Severino maintained his velocity throughout. He even threw his hardest pitch, a 98.6-mph four-seam fastball, for a strikeout in his final frame.
“I always have a little extra in the tank,” he said.
On a day when the Mets’ offense managed little, scoring only on Francisco Alvarez’s bases-loaded groundout in the fourth inning, the pitchers figured it out.
In relief of Severino, Jose Butto tossed a scoreless seventh, Dedniel Nunez recorded a scoreless eighth and Edwin Diaz pitched a perfect bottom of the ninth for the save.
Miami finished 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position, stranding 10.
The Mets also went 0-for-7 in those spots and left 10 runners on base.
Marlins righthander Roddery Munoz allowed one run, three hits and three walks in five innings. He struck out five.
Diaz closing out the game was noteworthy in that it was a successful — and routine — appearance on the mound in Miami.
The last time he pitched here — May 18 — he allowed four runs in one-third of an inning, losing a lead so large that it didn’t even qualify as a blown save. Diaz was in tears at his locker afterward.
That was the game that led the Mets to remove him from the ninth-inning job.
The occasion before that — March 15, 2023 — Diaz was playing with Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic. In a celebration after the final out, he tore the patellar tendon in his right knee, and he had season-ending surgery the next day.
Those memories were not on his mind Saturday, Diaz said. This will be a better memory, though.
“Of course,” he said. “Even [in the WBC], I threw a gem. I threw really good, I just got hurt. Last time, it wasn’t my day. But today, everything went perfect.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
