CLEVELAND — Luis Severino took an important step towards a return to the Yankees on Monday, but his overall timeline still remains unclear.
The right-hander threw his first bullpen session on Monday since being shut down with a strained lat near the end of spring training and said he continued to feel pain-free.
“Feels really good,” said Severino, who threw 22 pitches before the Yankees met the Guardians at Progressive Field. “We’ll see [Tuesday] how I feel and then we’re going to go from there.”
Severino was hopeful that if he bounced back well on Tuesday, he would then throw another bullpen session in “two or three days.” Whether he could potentially start to face hitters after that was to be determined.
“I don’t know that,” manager Aaron Boone said. “First thing was getting through today. Sounds like that went pretty well. I don’t know exactly the plan.”
Severino initially said he hoped he would only miss three or four starts, but it appears it may be more than that.
In his absence, rookie right-hander Jhony Brito has filled in with two strong starts.
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Severino said he has not felt any pain in his lat since about a week after the injury happened, which was during his postgame routine after a Grapefruit League start on March 21.
He said he would continue to listen to the Yankees’ training staff in terms of what would come next in his rehab.
“Whatever it takes,” he said. “I don’t know what they think. The trainers are the bosses of that. They know more about this than me. So whatever they tell me to do, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Willie Calhoun got his first start of the season on Monday, serving as the designated hitter against Guardians right-hander Shane Bieber. It marked Calhoun’s first game as a Yankee after being added to the roster on Saturday when Josh Donaldson went on the injured list.
“Willie can really hit,” Boone said. “I just wanted to get him in the lineup today.”
Aaron Judge has ditched using a shorter stride with two strikes that he had started implementing over the offseason.
“We’ll keep the approach, but some of the mechanical adjustments I was trying to make with that, we kind of scratched that,” Judge said. “So I think the approach will be the same. Still a lot of improvement I gotta make on that.”