The Yankees routed Cleveland and Severino made his return to the team
The Yankees had a much-needed rout of the Texas Rangers, 7–1, on Tuesday at Yankee Stadium in the rain. This was their second win in a row over the Rangers, who are 41 games under .500, after not performing well in losing two out of three games to the mediocre Cleveland Indians, who will be the Guardians soon.
Since the Blue Jays also won on Tuesday, the Yankees are still half a game behind them for the second wild card spot. It is important that they win tonight’s game to sweep the series before their 3-game weekend series in Boston against the Red Sox.
There were many players who played well on Tuesday but the one that really stands out is Luis Severino, who pitched in his first game since the 2019 ALCS. It had been 707 days since the former Yankee ace was last on a big league mound.
He was going to come back in the middle of the season but he unfortunately had a groin injury and a shoulder injury when he was making his comeback from Tommy John surgery. He had his groin injury when he was making a rehab start in Brooklyn and his shoulder setback in about August. There was not enough time to ramp up to be a starting pitcher, so he will be able to pitch one or two innings and improve the bullpen that has been overworked this season leading to ineffectiveness the last few weeks.
Severino said before the game that this return would feel like his debut back in 2015. The Yankees did not want his first game action since 2019 to be in a high leverage situation, and they were able to avoid this happening since Aaron Judge his a 3-run homer in the seventh to give the Yankees a 6-run lead.
“Proud moment for him, for his teammates and for all of us,” Boone said. “Worked his tail off to get to this moment."
“He’s a big part of this organization, a big part of this team,” Judge said. “We’re gonna need him down the stretch, I know that.”
Severino pitched in the rain but that did not take away from his ability to have success. Catcher Jose Trevino was the first batter he faced and he struck him out on a changeup. He had a sharp slider and his fastball and changeup were very effective in his first game back as well. His velocity of 94–95 was two or three MPH slower than it used to be, but he will likely get that back soon.
Severino’s second batter was third baseman Yonny Hernandez and Severino got him to groundout on a changeup on a ball that was a routine play. After Leody Taveras double to the wall on a circle change, Severino struck out Isiah Kiner-Falefa on a nasty slider.
He got Andy Ibanez to line out to Estevan Florial on the first pitch the threw in the ninth inning. In his two innings pitched, he allowed two hits, had two impressive strikeouts, limited the hard contact and it seems like the will be able to really improve the bullpen in the last 10 games of the season.
Severino was the Yankees ace in 2017 and 2018, which were his third and fourth MLB seasons at ages 23 and 24 years old. In those seasons he had a 3.18 ERA, which was the sixth best ERA in the AL in that span. He was an All-Star in both of those seasons and finished third in Cy Young voting in 2017 when he finished with a 2.98 ERA and 230 strikeouts.
Severino is the feel good story of the night and Yankees outfield hit three homers. Yankees are now 15–1 when Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton homer in same game this season, which proves how important it is when they get homers from their two biggest sluggers who have been on the team the whole season.
Judge had a hard hit double in the first that went off of Leody Taveres’s glove on the warning track. Anthony Rizzo was on first and held up since he thought ball might be caught. That was why he didn’t score from first. Yankees had second and third with one out and Stanton had a broken bat ground out to Kiner-Falefa at shortstop that scored Rizzo for Stanton’s 82nd RBI. Rizzo struck out swinging with a runner on second to end 1st.
Stanton hit a bullet line drive home run inside the pole in left field to give Yankees a 2–0 lead. Most of his homers get out of the stadium in a hurry and he is top two in the American League in exit velocity. That was the third hardest hit homer of the MLB season and it sent Rangers starter Dane Dunning out of the game. It had 118.5 exit velocity. His hardest hit homer of the season went to the last row of first level and it lead to the fans ducking in about the 12th row.
The Yankees turned a double play for the first two outs in the 2nd that they were able to get called after the review confirmed the runner at first was out.
Brett Gardner got to second in the second inning after a hard line drive double that advanced Gleyber Torres to third. Gardner has been in a slump recently but has been a highlight since the beginning of August. He is just 2–21 in his six games but in his previous 10 games he was 12–33 (.364) with seven RBI. In August he had a .277 average, which was much, much better than the .169 average he had in July.
Gardner leads the American League in pitches seen per at-bat. He has always been very patient.
After Gardner’s double, Gio Urshela struck out on a check swing with two runners in scoring position. Kiner Falefa made a great play in the hole to get LeMahieu out to strand two runners. Urshela went 1–3 in this game and in his last eight games he is 10–29 with two homers and five RBI. He has really improved since going 5–44 in his first 14 games after coming off of the injured list. He has been playing recently much more like he did last season when he finished with a .298 average and 30 RBI in 43 games.
Ibanez hit a hard line drive in the fourth that Stanton played well off of the wall to hold Ibanez to first. This put runners on first and third and Jordan Montgomery had to get out of a jam. Montgomery then struck out Adolis Garcia after being down 2–0 in the count. A run then scored on a groundout to third to make score 2–1. He got Willie Calhoun to ground out to second and he pitched very well after runners were on first and third with no outs.
Rizzo hit a well placed RBI single through the shift where shortstop would be to make the score 3–1 with no outs in 5th. They disappointingly just got one run that inning. Stanton hit into another one of his double plays to end the 5th. However, his two-run homer made that double play not mean as much.
Joey Gallo hit a real moonshot in the sixth on a high pitch that went to the second deck in right. It made the score 4–1. It had 6.4 seconds of hang time. Stanton’s homer got out of stadium in hurry and this one had lots of hang time.
Gallo’s 38 homers this season are the most by an outfielder this season. In Gallo last seven starts, he has hit an impressive six homers. Six of his last eight hits have been home runs, which very rarely happens.
The Yankees have three players in the top 14 in the American League in homers, which gives them a lot of power in their lineup. Gallo is fifth with his 38 homers, Judge his sixth with his 36 homers and Stanton is tied for 13th with his 31 homers.
Judge hit a blast of a 3-run homer to sixth row of bleachers in left center in the rain in the 7th inning to give Yankees 7–1 lead. Judge is now 4–7 with a homer, a double and four RBI in the two games so far in this series, which is a good improvement after going 2–21 in his previous five games. He has 36 homers, 22 doubles and 89 RBI and should finish in the top five in MVP voting.
“Big G, he hits it about the hardest I’ve ever seen in the game,” Judge said. “I’ll just take my little lob shots over the right-field wall.”
The Yankees are 64–34 in night games this season, which is the second best record in MLB at night. On the other hand, they are 21–33 in day games, which is the fifth worst record in MLB in day games.
Michael King, who is in his third MLB season all with the Yankees, impressively struck out the side on 10 pitches in the 7th inning. He has been outstanding since coming off of injured list that he was on since the beginning of July. He got the 9.1 innings, two hits, one earned run since coming back.
He got the last out of the sixth inning after Montgomery’s impressive start. He has been a very good addition to the bullpen. In his 9.1 innings (four games), he has allowed just one earned run, two hits, one walk and has 10 strikeouts. He has command of all of his pitches. He should be able to now be put into some high leverage situations since he has been in games so far when the Yankees had a big lead or were losing by a lot.
Montgomery only allowed one earned run and four hits in his 5.2 innings. He has now impressively allowed one earned run or less in eight of his last 10 starts. This streak of dominance has lowered his ERA from 4.18 to 3.55.
Montgomery’s changeup was very effective. The Rangers were 1–9 against his changeup. Montgomery stayed away from a big inning again and another impressive performance allowing less than three runs.
This was the 17th straight start with no more than three runs of support, but the three runs of support he got in this game were enough to get his sixth win of the season. He has been unlucky since he has only six wins in 28 starts this season but Corey Kluber has five wins in 14 starts this season. Kluber’s 3.68 ERA is very close to Montgomery’s 3.55 ERA.
