Mets better hope Luis Severino's dud vs. Twins was a one-off occurrence
Mets pitcher Luis Severino talks on the mound with catcher Francisco Alvarez in the third inning against the Minnesota Twins at Citi Field on Wednesday. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
Luis Severino didn’t pick the best time for his worst start of the season.
If the Mets’ de facto ace was going to raise a red flag or two about his No. 1 status for the second half, as he did during Wednesday’s 8-3 loss to the Twins, better to have warned the front office a few minutes before the trade deadline rather than 20 hours or so after the buzzer.
Would seeing Severino get smacked around for six runs in three innings -- his shortest outing since Aug. 9 with the Yankees -- have spurred president of baseball operations David Stearns to be more aggressive on the trade front?
Tough to say. Listening to Stearns explain his deadline strategy Tuesday evening made it sound like he was comfortable sticking to a more prudent approach in regards to safeguarding his maturing farm system.
But that was before Severino turned in a performance that had all the dashboard warning lights flashing and manager Carlos Mendoza repeatedly asking him if he was OK. This was not the garden-variety clunker, either. Severino had pitched so well for the Mets, for so long, that it was a bit of a shock to the system.
Severino’s velocity was down across the board. The fastball that averaged 96.1 mph over his first 20 starts plunged to 94.7, according to Statcast. The slider dipped from 86.9 to 84.1; the cutter 92.8 to 88.9. As a result, the same Severino who entered Wednesday with a 3.58 ERA was rendered defenseless against the Twins, who ripped him for all six hits -- and two homers -- in the span of two innings.
Afterward, when Severino was asked what was a struggle for him, he replied, “Everything.”
Severino wasn’t lying. The Twins clobbered every pitch in his arsenal. Bryon Buxton’s solo homer in the second inning was a knee-high sinker. In the third, Royce Lewis’ RBI double was a slider up in the zone before Matt Wallner smacked a belt-level changeup for a two-run homer that nearly clipped the Delta Shuttle overhead (442 feet).
Mendoza was so alarmed by Severino’s futility that he had him checked out numerous times and pulled the plug after 62 pitches, his fewest all season (he threw 79 back on June 30, but that was over seven innings). This was such an outlier from Severino that it was only natural to assume something was up physically, but both him and Mendoza denied there was any problem.
“I kept asking, ‘Are you OK?’’’ Mendoza said. “I sent the trainers to go see him in the sixth inning [in the clubhouse] to check on him and then I followed up with it. But everything is fine.”
That was all the manager could do Wednesday. But for Stearns, being past the deadline, he’s now powerless to improve a rotation that is relying heavily on Severino to lead them to the playoffs. A day earlier, Stearns was content to add a back-end starter in Paul Blackburn, who will make his Mets’ debut in Friday’s series opener against the Angels in Anaheim. With the exorbitant prices for rental A-listers, Stearns figured he could get by with another depth piece, as long as the current starting corps could stay intact.
Shortly after Tuesday’s 6 p.m. deadline, Stearns had to feel good about his decision when Sean Manaea fired a seven-inning gem, allowing only two hits and zero runs, in the Mets’ 2-0 win over the Twins. His rotation, which combined for a 3.82 ERA (fifth in the majors) since the Mets’ resurgence began on June 3, still seemed steadily on course -- despite the injuries to Christian Scott (UCL sprain) and Kodai Senga (calf strain).
Senga’s entire contribution this season was a total of 5 1/3 innings, so he really didn’t figure into the Flushing rebound. The Mets had put up the best record in the majors for the past two months without him. There was no reason to think they couldn’t stay on that winning track if he wasn’t part of the equation going forward. That was the calculus Stearns used anyway in weighing upgrades at the deadline and he chose not to go the extra mile to try for a Jack Flaherty, Zack Eflin, Trevor Rogers or Yusei Kikuchi.
“You’re never going to replace a pitcher like Senga at the deadline,” Stearns said. “So I think we just tried to figure out how to best fortify our team around it. And that meant both in the rotation and the bullpen to ensure that we had enough arms and some flexibility in various roles.”
If anything does go wrong with Severino, the Mets can’t replace him either. He’s now up to 123 2/3 innings this season -- the most by far since he threw 191 1/3 back in 2018 -- so that’s definitely in the back of their minds, especially given his injury history over the previous five years with the Yankees.
For now, Severino isn’t officially a concern. But the days leading up to his next start could be an anxious stretch based on Wednesday’s dud, and the Mets can’t truly exhale until Severino pitches like himself again -- as the ace of Stearns’ patchwork rotation, which has performed to its ceiling for most of this season.
Now that the deadline has passed, this is no time for it to come crashing down.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
