CLE🌺VE❀LAND — Do we have a new King of the Hill in New York?
You’re starting a third team in the Tri-State area — let’s call them the Paramus Mall Rats — and you get to choose one pitc✱her from either the Yankees or the Mets. Whom do you choose?
You 🍷have to give ultra-serious consideration to Luis Severino, don’t you?
He’s younger than any of the Mets arms. He’s (knock on wood, Yankees fans) healthier. And ಞhe just 🦩might be better.
“That’s as impressive stuff as you’re going to see,” Indians manager Terry Francona said after Severino dominated h🦩is club en route to an♓ 8-1 Yankees victory. “The fastball, everybody sees that, but he’s gaining confidence in his🐬 off-speed. T⛎hat’s a tough guy to face.”
Severino allowed just a run and two hits over 6 ²/₃ innings, walking one and striking out nine, to give the Yankees their second s▨traight win and a series split. They remain three games behind the Red Sox (two in the l🐓oss column), who have won six in a row, in the American League East.
This one turned on a sixth-inning, bases-loaded, two-out flyball by Jacoby Ellsbury that Indians right fielder Abraham Almonte (a former Yankees prospect) misplayed into a tie-breaking, three-run triple. In the seventh, Aaron Judge added another memorable homer, his AL♍-leading 35th, on a laser that began its path looking like a double into the right-center-field gap and just kept carrying over the wall.
They coꦜnstituted big moments in this intense game. Severino, meanwhile, is putting together a big season. In five starts since the All-Star break, he owns a 0.89 ERA, having allowed just three earned runs in 32 ¹/₃ innings. The only blemish against him Sunday came when Michael Brantley drilled a solo homer to center field in the bottom of the first.
“Everybody sees it,” said Austin Romine, who started behind the plate as Gary Sanchez worked before the game on his defense then sat. “He’s on the corner throwing 100 the whol🌱e game. He has two different sliders. He mixes his slidersꦬ. When you have 100 and you do that, he’ll be hard to hit.”
“Everything was good,” Severino said.
Everything has been good for a while with the 23-year-old, who now owns a 2.91 ERA in🐈 this homer-happy season.
“He♌’s one of the best pitchers,” said Indians shortstop Francis🐭co Lindor, Severino’s 2017 All-Star Game teammate. “He did well today. Tough guy.”
Which Mets pitcher would you take over Severino? Jacob deGrom? He has a superior track record, but he’s also about 5 ½ years older. Noah Syndergaard? His pure stuff might be filthier. He has to re-prove himself, though, after missing the bulk of this season with a torn lat m♈uscle that may or may not ha🥀ve resulted from getting too bulky last winter and/or refusing to undergo an MRI exam right before the injury.
Uneasy lays the head that wears this crown, for sure. Remember two years ago, when chatter emerged that Michael Pineda, not Matt Harvey, might possess the highest ceiling in the five boroughs? Yeesh.
Yet S🔯everino has made quite a case for himself. The Indians last saw him at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 22, 2015, before Severino crashed in 2016 and remade and rededicated himself.
“He always has had an arm that I’m sure ever꧂y pitching coach is salivating over,” Francona said. “But his changeup … he kind of changed speeds even on his breaking ball a little bit. It was♛ really impressive.”
“He’s continued to improve all year long,” Joe Girardi said. “It really st𝓰arted the last two weeks in spring training. You’re seeing things now that he didn’t do early on, just with pitching and changing spe🌄eds.”
“You’ve got to tip your hat to him because he executeꦐd today,” Lindor said.
People all over are tipping their hats to Severino, who’s as good as it gets right now in basebal🌟l’s capital. If he can carry this through for another two and a half months, then his place atop the Big Apple might be undisputed.