So we’ve been looking forward to this game for a while. Luis Severino showed a lot of the promise that he’s shown in minors with five solid innings in the books. However, the offense was mostly silent against the knuckleballer Steven Wright and their ninth inning rally didn’t come to much fruition – the result was a tough 2-1 loss to the Red Sox.
Sevvy Baby
On his first ML pitch ever, Severino caught the inside corner with a 94 mph fastball against Brock Holt. He induced a grounder to first against Holt. Against the next batter, Xander Bogaerts, Severino got a call on the 3-2 count cutter for strike three. A grounder and then a strikeout, progress!
In the second, he got first two easy outs against Hanley and Sandoval. Against Napoli, Severino induced a grounder to Headley and the third baseman completely botched the throw. Napoli reached second as a result and De Aza drove him in on a big double to right. 1-0 Red Sox. Welcome to the majors, Luis.
Severino’s third was quite nice – he struck out Bradley Jr. and Holt and popped out Bogaerts. In the fourth inning, with a 2-0 count, Severino missed the spot on the outside corner and left a fastball up the middle for David Ortiz… and the Red Sox slugger missed none of it. Ortiz hit it way deep into the bleachers (441 ft – the second longest dinger in YS3 this year) for a solo homer. 2-0 Red Sox. That was the only major mistake Severino made all night. In the fifth, he had another nice three-up-three down inning (pop out from De Aza, grounder from Swihart and strikeout from Bradley Jr.). At the time, Severino’s pitch count reached 94 and Girardi replaced him with Warren for the sixth.
All in all – good debut from Severino. He went five innings, allowed only two hits (both were pretty big XBH’s though), one earned run and struck out seven. He showed that he can use any of his pitch in any count. Another impressive thing – he reached to two strikes against 14 out of 18 batters faced. I feel, as he pitches more in majors, he’ll figure ways to put them away more efficiently.
Silence of the Bats
Yankee hitters didn’t have much going on against Steven Wright tonight. Steven Wright! To be fair, it seemed like his knuckleball movement was on its game tonight. They struck out a good amount and made a lot of weak contacts. In the fifth inning, Didi Gregorius singled through the middle to break up the no-no.
Leading off the seventh, Carlos Beltran hit a solo homer to put the Yankees on board. 2-1 Red Sox. And that was about the only thing that the Yankees had going against Steven Wright. Eight innings, four hits, one run and nine strikeouts.
What made it scream more of “it’s not our night” was when Ellsbury grounded into double play in the eighth. With no out, John Ryan Murphy on first, Ellsbury hit a sharp grounder up to middle that deflected off of Wright’s leg and rolled easily to the shortstop Bogaerts. That was only the third GIDP of the season for Ellsbury. Welp.
Before tonight’s game, Wright had a 4.53 ERA and 5.24 FIP in 59.2 IP – that’s not good, but he did seem to have a lot of things going on tonight, which happens. Yeah, we could talk about Headley’s second-inning error that became one of the differences of the game but let’s also not forget that the bat didn’t do much.
Rally falls short
The Red Sox pitching staff really isn’t what it used to be but Koji Uehara is still a very good reliever (2.33 ERA/2.34 FIP before tonight’s game). Uehara came in the ninth to get a save. With one out, Teixeira hit a liner to right that Castillo dove and got to… after the ball bounced right in front of his glove. Initially, the first base umpire called it an out but they reversed it after replay.
During Beltran’s at bat, a wild pitch by Uehara let the pinch runner Chris Young advance to second, putting the runner in scoring position. Beltran ended up flying out to the center, failing to advance the runner (let alone drive him in). Headley followed it up with inducing a five-pitch walk. Girardi then summoned Brian McCann to pinch hit for Didi Gregorius. On the fifth pitch of the at-bat, McCann hit a flyball to center for a routine out. Game over, Red Sox win 2-1. Oh well.
Leftovers
After Severino’s departure, Adam Warren tossed three solid innings in relief. He allowed only one baserunner (a double by Sandoval in the seventh) and struck out two. I know that it’s good to have depths in bullpen but he could be one of the more consistent starters along with Eovaldi, I feel like.
Chasen Shreve, however, was not as reliable. After getting two outs, he allowed a double to Sandoval and intentionally walked Napoli to face Rusney Castillo. After a 7-pitch at-bat, Shreve walked Castillo and had to face Swihart with bases loaded. Fortunately for New York, Shreve struck out Swihart looking on the pitch no. 30 of the inning to get out of the trouble.
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