New York Yankees: Bad News for Luis Severino for the upcoming season

Spring training is starting to get into full gear for all 30 teams. These games allow management to see who comes with them when the regular season begins. For the New York Yankees, they seem to need to figure out the big hole in their rotation. It was announced late Tuesday night that Yankees pitcher Luis Severino was diagnosed with a partially torn UCL. The way to fix that is to have Tommy John surgery. The recovery for a pitcher when they have this surgery is 12-15 months. We shouldn’t expect to see him back until the 2021 season.

The surgery was performed first in 1974 by the surgeon Frank Jobe on pitcher Tommy John. Since 1974, there have been a lot of pitchers and position players who have had the surgery. Severino debuted for the Yankees in 2015. Since then, he has pitched to a record of 42-26 with a 3.46 ERA. What makes this surgery such a bummer is that Severino was starting to get into a grove. As he was getting more into his career, he went from being a 3-8 pitcher in 2016 to being a 19-8 pitcher in 2018. According to ESPN, he was scratched from a bullpen session and didn’t participate in any drills this week. Manager Aaron Boone did say that this has been bothering Severino after Game 3 of the ALCS with the Houston Astros.

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If this was the only problem facing the Yankees rotation, it wouldn’t be a problem. It seems the Yankees would wish this was the only problem facing the rotation. The Yankees will already be without both James Paxton and Domingo German. Paxton had surgery over the offseason to remove a cyst, German is still serving from his 81 game suspension for violating MLB’s domestic violence policy. He needs to serve 63 games this season. As of now, the Yankees have Gerrit Cole, Tanaka, and Happ in the rotation. They have two free spots.

The rotation will be something that we will need to see how they play out in the first half of the 2020 season.