


Twelve days later, Luis Severino was better equipped to address his future.
His oblique is feeling better, he said, even if sneezes and coughs have become dreaded and painful.
His season is over, but he is confident there will be no carryover and he will be healthy for next spring training — wherever that is.
After throwing a pitch Sept. 8 and feeling as if “somebody shot me,” he said, a high-grade left oblique strain likely is sending him into free agency, Severino was emotional.
He struggled through pain and fought back tears during a media session, grasping the sudden end of his campaign and perhaps his Yankees career.
On Wednesday, the longest-tenured major league Yankee acknowledged there is a “large chance” he has thrown his final pitch for the organization that signed him in 2011 out of the Dominican Republic.
“What can I say? There’s a large chance it could happen,” Severino said of the thought his days in pinstripes are over. “I don’t know what the future’s going to bring to me.”
The 29-year-old will be a high-upside free agent with a history of domination and a history of injuries.
He debuted in 2015, replacing the injured Michael Pineda for a club Joe Girardi managed.
He broke through in 2017, when he finished third in Cy Young voting and emerged as the team’s ace.
He was an All-Star for a second time in 2018, when he posted a 3.39 ERA. And then the setbacks began.
A series of injuries to his shoulder and elbow, culminating with 2020 Tommy John surgery, limited him to 18 total innings from 2019-21.
He pitched more like himself last year, posting a 3.18 ERA in 19 starts, but a lat strain cost him more than two months of the season.
This season has been the strangest, beginning with another lat strain, returning in May and eventually saying he felt like the “worst pitcher in the game” as his struggles mounted.

He had begun to turn around his nightmare season, with a 2.49 ERA in his last four starts, before the oblique gave out, which forced Severino to consider his future and past.
“I’ve given my 100 percent every day,” Severino said of his time in The Bronx before the Yankees played the Blue Jays. “I’ve had a lot of injuries here, but I’ve enjoyed being a Yankee, loved being a Yankee.
“If I had to choose my career again, I would always choose being a Yankee.”
He said he has not talked with the club about an extension, which means he will be able to choose the next part of his career, but he “of course” would want to return.
A reunion, though, seems unlikely for a team that has given major money to Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon, will bring back Nestor Cortes and has seen the emergences of Clarke Schmidt and Michael King, as well as tantalizing moments from young pitchers such as Randy Vasquez and Jhony Brito.
If this is the end, Severino said, “I’ve loved it.”