LOS ANGELES — On his slow journey back to the Yankees from straining his lat in spring training, Luis Severino had plenty of time to come up with some good one-liners.
Some were more direct than others, and most of them came while he was smiling, but his frustration was clear.
“The plan right now is to have a rehab assignment, but right now how things are going, maybe it can change to be another live [batting practice],” he said, chuckling, on May 7, after the Yankees had pushed back his rehab assignment to get one more live session in — which he called “unnecessary.”
“I threw 40 pitches last time, so hopefully I can get to 50, or 47 … or 41, I don’t know,” he said later in that interview, with some comedic timing.
“Not happy that I got a 20-pitch limit, but it’s better than nothing,” he said facetiously the day before his season debut, when he was actually capped at 75 pitches.
Severino walked the line of keeping things funny but also getting his point across that his rehab process was going slower than he would have liked.
“He likes to push buttons,” pitching coach Matt Blake said Wednesday, “but he also realizes we’ve got his best interests in mind, so we’re not just trying to hold him back for the sake of [holding him back]. We would love for him to throw 100 pitches. We’ve just gotta do it in the right amount of steps.”
The Yankees’ patient but intentional buildup of Severino appears to have worked just as they had hoped, with the right-hander looking sharp in his first two outings. He has given up just two earned runs across 11 ¹/₃ innings while walking four and striking out 10. His average fastball velocity is up to 97.3 mph, where it hasn’t been since 2018.
Severino built up to 82 pitches (across 6 ²/₃ efficient innings) in his most recent start and figures to have somewhere around 90 pitches to work with for Friday’s start against the Dodgers.
“I think the idea is he’s not making too big of jumps early on and making sure he’s getting a base underneath him of work,” Blake said. “Within that, he’s got time to work on stuff, so he’s not always working hard to recover because he’s making too big a jump. So I think that he feels good physically and that gives him a chance to get quality work in.”
Blake indicated that he doesn’t mind Severino publicly pushing for the reins to be loosened, as long as he ultimately understands why the Yankees are being cautious — and Severino has usually conceded they are just looking out for him.
“There’s a natural tension that you’re always going to have with competitive guys and that’s fine,” Blake said. “As long as there’s an understanding between both sides that we all want the same thing, you’re fine with that. Just making sure it doesn’t carry over into there’s tension that’s unnecessary.”
Carlos Rodon has found himself in a similar situation of late in his own rehab process. He wanted to try to pitch through the back issues he was experiencing last month, but the Yankees wouldn’t let him, not wanting stiffness to turn into something worse that would cost him more time.
Now, Rodon has advanced to throwing two bullpen sessions — a third was scheduled for Thursday in Los Angeles — with the potential to advance to facing hitters next week. Rodon said on Monday that “we wouldn’t be who we are if we weren’t pushing” to get back to the mound as soon as possible.
“With both those guys and knowing their injury history, it would be reckless for us to push them,” Blake said. “So with the long range in mind, we gotta go step by step. There’s gonna be — not hard conversations, but they want to go faster than what maybe makes sense to go from a physical workload standpoint.
“So you always have to have an objective conversation around why we’re making decisions and hopefully lay it out for them so they understand what this big picture is and not that we’re just holding them back for the sake of holding them back.”