Luis Severino just doesn't have it as Mets fall to Twins in final game before long road trip
Mets pitcher Luis Severino leaves the game at the end of the third inning against the Minnesota Twins at Citi Field on Wednesday. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
A day after the Mets failed to nail a front-line starter at the trade deadline, they again proved it probably wouldn’t have hurt to acquire a front-line starter at the trade deadline.
Luis Severino’s velocity dip and pitch location keyed him to arguably his worst start of the season as the Mets failed to complete the sweep of the Twins in an 8-3 loss at Citi Field Wednesday afternoon.
Severino, who’s been more than serviceable this season and came into the day sporting a 3.58 ERA, allowed six runs and six hits with two walks and two strikeouts over three innings after previously not having pitched fewer than five innings in any game this year. He was checked out extensively by trainers after velocity drops across all six of his pitches - including 1.4 mph on his fastball and 2.8 mph on his slider - but said he felt healthy and was not overly fatigued, despite being up to 123 ⅔ innings pitched this season. Due to injury and ineffectiveness, the resurgent righty hadn’t pitched more than 102 major-league innings since 2018.
The Twins hit two homers, both off Severino and both bombs: Byron Buxton’s 435-foot solo shot in the second and Matt Wallner’s 442-foot two-run homer in a five-run third.
“My next start, I know my power is going to be there,” Severino said. “It was just one of those days. We have a long season, so we’re going to have some outings like that. I don’t expect to be 97, 98 every outing. I’m going to have some struggles through the season and it happened to me today. So hopefully - not hopefully; I need to get better and will get better.”
Though David Stearns acquired some valuable bullpen arms before the 6 p.m. deadline Tuesday, the Mets, like many other teams, were priced out of what turned out to be a sellers’ market for starting pitching, settling instead on getting a depth piece in A’s righthander Paul Blackburn. With Kodai Senga out for the season, and despite a brilliant outing by Sean Manaea Tuesday, the rotation’s inconsistency continues to be a point of concern. Their 4.25 rotation ERA is 18th in baseball, and the worst of any National League team qualified for a playoff spot going into Wednesday.
Brandon Nimmo also suffered an injury scare in the sixth after fouling a ball off his foot, but X-Rays were negative and he hopes to be ready for the start of a gut-punch of a West Coast road trip beginning Friday - a span of 10 games in 10 days in four cities thanks to a rescheduled one-game stint in St. Louis that was inconveniently scheduled between Angels’ and Rockies’ series. Nimmo, who previously banged up his knee, went 0-for-3 Wednesday to extend his post-All Star slump to 5-for-45.
“By this point in the season, you’re going to be a little bit beat up,” he said, adding he’s been feeling “terrible” at the plate since the break. “It is what it is. I’ll get out of it. I always do.”
The Twins struck first on Buxton’s homer, but the Mets got two back in the bottom of the second, after Jeff McNeil singled and Mark Vientos hit his 16th homer of the year to give them a brief 2-1 lead. That’s all they would get off starter Pablo Lopez, though, who allowed just three hits and three walks with seven strikeouts over six innings.
Severino, though, allowed five straight hits to kick off the third - three singles to Austin Martin, Trevor Larnach and Max Kepler to score two, and then a double from Royce Lewis to plate Kepler. That brought up Wallner, who blasted a 81.1-mph changeup to center for his sixth homer of the year to put the Twins up 6-2. Severino got out of the inning without further damage, but Carlos Mendoza swapped him in favor of Tylor Megill, who was shipped to the bullpen Wednesday in light of the Blackburn acquisition.
Megill allowed one run in two innings of relief; Wallner hit a one-out double off the wall in left-center in the fifth and came home on Carlos Santana's RBI double to make it 7-2. The Twins tacked on another in the eighth when Ryan Jeffers’ force out off Phil Maton chased Buxton from third. Francisco Alvarez’s groundout scored Luis Torrens in the ninth.
“This is what we have and we have to go out there and fight,” Severino said. “You need to do all your recovery and all your exercise, try to look at some video and see what was going on…[and look at] a lot of different things that can help me come back to the same thing that I was before. I just need to keep working.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
