Yankees should be concerned about Luis Severino’s slump

The Yankees added J.A. Happ to give their rotation depth, but suddenly New York has questions at the top due to Luis Severino’s slump.

During the first half of the 2018 season, Luis Severino looked to be headed for a historically good campaign. Unfortunately, his last four starts have been ugly at best. It’s time for Brian Cashman and the Yankees to be legitimately concerned about their ace.

Today’s outing against the Blue Jays was just a continuation of Severino’s nightmare. He’s got an ERA of 8.85 in his last four starts. The Yankees did manage to give him one win during that stretch, but he’s been a horror show. The fact that he’s given up 33 hits and seven home runs over his last 19 1/3 innings pitched has Yankees fans shaking their heads.

The challenge for Aaron Boone and company is to figure out what’s wrong with Severino. It doesn’t look to be a physical issue. His fastball velocity is off slightly, but losing 0.3 mph off your fastball doesn’t cause a pitcher’s performance to fall off a cliff like this.

Some observers believe the talented right-handed may be tipping pitches. That would certainly explain opponents’ ability to square up his fastballs as of late. The Yankees have been adamant that isn’t the case, but the team wouldn’t admit it if he were giving opponents a heads up on what was coming. They would work on fixing it quietly as opposed to advertising it to the entire league.

The more likely explanation is that there is something subtly wrong with Severino’s mechanics. He clearly doesn’t have the same snap on his breaking pitches that he featured earlier in the season. In particular, his slider doesn’t look nearly as tight as it did. Severino’s inability to put hitters away with his breaking pitches naturally explains why his fastball effectiveness is on the decline.

While it is time to be concerned about Severino’s slump, it’s not time to panic. He was just a few pitches away from putting in a quality outing against the Royals today. Kansas City benefited from a pop-up double to left field and a home run into Yankee Stadium’s extremely short right field porch. That isn’t intended to take anything away from their offensive performance, but it’s fair to say Severino didn’t get much good luck today.

The only thing the Yankees can realistically do is work to help Severino fix his mechanics between starts. It’s not as if they have the pitching depth to shut him down for any length of time. Skipping Severino in the rotation just isn’t a practical consideration for Boone.

If the Yankees are going to make noise this postseason, they’ll need Severino to return to his earlier form. If he doesn’t pitch like an ace in October, this team isn’t a threat to win its 28th World Series title.