TAMPA — What do the Mets’ Jeff McNeil, the Rays’ Joey Wendle and Ryan Yarbrough, the Marlins’ Brian Anderson, the Diamondbacks’ Yoshihisa Hirano and the White Sox’s Daniel Palka have in common?
If you guessed they all received votes on last season’s Rookie of the Year ballots — 7 of the 11 players to do so — you would be correct.
If you guessed they all are older than Luis Severino, you also would be correct.
The 2019 Yankees’ hopes rest significantly on Severino, their likely Opening Day starter, who reported to camp looking for redemption from a second-half meltdown last year that culminated in an American League Division Series whupping at the hands of the rival Red Sox.
Severino altered his offseason workouts in the hopes of refining his mechanics and extending his endurance, and he’s open to suggestions that pitch-tipping expedited his plummet. Nevertheless, for Severino, who turned 25 last Wednesday, maybe just as important will be turning another year older — and wiser.
When evaluating and projecting Severino, we really must consider how ahead of the curve he is.
“It’s amazing,” CC Sabathia said of his teammate Saturday at George M. Steinbrenner Field, echoing comments he made recently on his “R2C2 is Uninterrupted” podcast. “So when he puts it all together, he’s going to dominate seasons. It’s exciting to see.”
Last fall — following Severino’s three-plus-inning, six-run stink bomb against the Red Sox in ALDS Game 3 — a reader emailed me and commented that Severino was not cut from the same cloth as past postseason studs like Tom Glavine or Greg Maddux. That sparked my curiosity: How did Glavine and Maddux look through their age-24 seasons?
Glavine, who debuted at 21 (like Severino), owned a 4.29 ERA and 89 ERA+ in 646 innings pitched. He hadn’t yet pitched in the playoffs.
Maddux, who debuted at age 20, put up a 3.68 ERA and 106 ERA+ in 911 innings. He had recorded an 0-1 record and 13.50 ERA in two postseason starts.
Severino possesses a 3.51 ERA and 125 ERA+ in 518 innings, the lighter workload reflecting his 2016 demotion to both the minors and the bullpen as well as the game’s increasing dependence on relievers. He is 1-2 with a 6.26 ERA in six postseason starts.
When I offered to Severino — who signed a four-year, $40-million extension with the Yankees last week — that he has accomplished a great deal given his youth, he responded: “Yeah, but I also see that there is a lot of guys that are younger than me that accomplished more than me. So I want to be at that level.”
Pressed on who did more at a younger age than him, Severino offered only one name, albeit a very good one: “Not younger now, but [Clayton] Kershaw. He’s having, right now, a Hall of Fame career. Guys like that, I admire, and I want to be in that situation one day.”
Kershaw won the first of his three (so far) National League Cy Young Awards in 2011, his age-23 season. At the same age, Severino finished third in the American League Cy Young voting.
Sabathia, who didn’t get a single Cy Young vote until he won the AL honors in 2007 (his age-26 season), said he didn’t feel like he put it all together until that time. The 1978 AL Cy Young recipient, Ron Guidry, didn’t pick up his first big league win until age 26, in 1977.
“He picked it up early, plus he’s got that God-given talent,” Guidry, in Yankees camp as a special instructor, said of Severino. “If you take that talent and you polish it, you get the old proverbial diamond in the rough. And he’s elevated himself to being as good as they have.”
As Severino sees it, the key to moving past last year’s disappointments and scaling his 2017 heights is “consistency the whole year. Not having down months.” And the key to that, he believes, is “90 percent mental, 10 percent physical.”
“I feel older now,” Severino said with a knowing smile. In his profession of choice, an older 25, free of major health concerns, should be better. Whether that turns out to be true will tell plenty about this Yankees season.
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