Yankees two-time All-Star pitcher suffers lat strain, IL stint likely

New York Yankees right-hander Luis Severino is probably headed to the 15-day injured list due to what manager Aaron Boone described to reporters (including Joel Sherman of the New York Post) as a lower-grade lat strain. Max Goodman of NJ Advance Media reported earlier on Saturday that Severino had been scratched from his planned start today, which was to be Severino’s last outing of spring training.

Severino becomes the third member of New York’s projected Opening Day rotation who will instead begin the season on the IL. Carlos Rodon was sidelined with a mild forearm strain but has at least been back throwing, while Frankie Montas’ season is in jeopardy after undergoing shoulder surgery. Those absences have resulted in Domingo German and Clarke Schmidt being elevated to rotation jobs, and the Yankees will now have to dip into their depth once more to replace Severino. Deivi Garcia, Jhony Brito, Matt Krook, and Randy Vasquez are all on the 40-man roster and slated for rotation duty at Triple-A, but Garcia is the only member of that group with Major League experience.

While the Yankees have two off-days in their first nine days of the regular season, they will need a fifth starter to make one turn through the rotation. In the best-case scenario, Severino would perhaps only miss one start or two starts, given how Boone left a bit of wiggle room about the IL placement and the severity of the injury. That said, Severino also missed over two months last season with a similar lat strain on his right side, so there is no guarantee that this new injury could be a short-term issue.

It makes for yet another injury setback for Severino, who pitched only 18 total regular-season innings total during the 2019-21 seasons. A more severe lat strain (as well as a rotator cuff problem) contributed to that layoff in 2019, and then Tommy John surgery wiped out almost all of his next two seasons. Even with his 2022 season also shortened by an IL stint, Severino still managed to toss 102 innings and re-establish himself as a quality starter, posting a 3.18 ERA, 27.7% strikeout rate, and 7.4% walk rate in his limited action.

The Yankees were encouraged enough by this performance to exercise their $15M club option on Severino’s services for the 2023 season, which seemed like a pretty easy call last November. As a result, the original four-year, $40M extension that Severino signed in Feb. 2019 became a five-year, $55M pact. That deal was a departure for a Yankees organization that usually doesn’t sign players to extensions, and given how Severino has tossed only 120 regular-season innings since signing the deal, the investment simply hasn’t worked out to date. Naturally, if Severino can get back onto the field relatively quickly, he still has plenty of time in the 2023 season to deliver some more return to the Yankees, as well as set himself up for another deal when he enters the free agent market this winter.

If the Yankees wanted to add rotation depth beyond their internal choices, the pickings are pretty slim on the free agent market at the moment.  However, some more names could become available as teams make their final roster cuts towards the end of spring training.  A pitcher facing an opt-out decision on his minor league contract, for example, might now view New York as a viable option if their current team isn’t planning on including them on the Opening Day roster.