Severino, the steady force at the top of the rotation, was hammered by the American League’s worst offensive team in the first game of a doubleheader.
The Yankees played their first game of Aaron Judge’s extended absence on Saturday. But it is the sudden foundering of their ace, Luis Severino, that could have the club even more concerned.
With only a few days left before the nonwaiver trade deadline, Severino, an All-Star and a steady force at the top of the Yankees rotation, was hammered by the American League’s worst offensive team, the Kansas City Royals, in a 10-5 loss in the first game of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium.
The Royals, who traded their best hitter, Mike Moustakas, to the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday, jumped on Severino for six runs and eight hits in four and one-third innings.
Since shutting down the Boston Red Sox in a scoreless outing on July 1, Severino has an 8.95 earned run average and has allowed 33 hits in 19 1/3 innings. He had allowed 32 hits in his previous 47 1/3 innings.
Severino (14-3) said he needed to find a way to “be myself again.”
“I don’t know what’s the issue,” he said. “I’ve been through this in the past. I just need to work on the stuff that’s not working.”
Lately, it has been hard to pinpoint what exactly has gone awry. In allowing 11 hits and six earned runs against the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday, Severino lacked command of his breaking pitches. On Saturday, his fastball still zipped, but in inconsistent directions.
“He was kind of scattered all over the place,” Yankees catcher Austin Romine said. “I was trying to reiterate to him to stay down the zone and throw through me. He was kind of inconsistent with his fastball today.”
Severino walked only one batter (and hit another), but his haphazard fastball location forced him to work behind in the count often and allowed too many pitches over the plate.
“As electric as his stuff is, command of the fastball is key for him,” Manager Aaron Boone said. “That sets up everything else.”
The Royals, averaging a little more than 3.5 runs per game, opened the scoring with a two-run double by Rosell Herrera in the third.
“After that,” Severino said, “I wasn’t commanding my fastball.”
It showed. In the fifth, Salvador Perez singled in two more runs with a line drive that zipped past Severino’s outstretched glove. The next batter, Lucas Duda, hit a two-run homer to right that made the score 6-0.
The Yankees already added two of the prized pitching targets of the season, acquiring reliever Zach Britton from Baltimore and starter J. A. Happ from Toronto in the past week.
But as they have struggled to gain ground on the A. L. East-leading Boston Red Sox, the Yankees almost certainly cannot afford to lose faith in their ace.
“This is a bump in the season for him,” Boone said. “He has everything to right the ship.”
It was the team’s first game without Judge, who will miss at least three weeks with a wrist fracture after being hit by a pitch in Thursday’s game. But even without Judge and the injured catcher Gary Sanchez, the Yankees do not lack for firepower.
A monstrous home run by Giancarlo Stanton, batting in the No. 2 spot for only the fourth time this season, measured at 447 feet to center and put the Yankees on the board in the fifth.
Stanton then reappeared with the bases loaded the following inning. A Yankees rally had trimmed the deficit to 6-4, knocked out the starting pitcher, Brad Keller, and brought the sold-out stadium crowd to its feet. Stanton took another prodigious hack and drove the ball hard to right, but it ran out of steam on the warning track to end the inning.
In the seventh, Gleyber Torres doubled in a run with nobody out with a drive off the right-field wall. But as Didi Gregorius scored, Torres tried to stretch his hit into a triple and was thrown out easily.
“In that moment, I think I’ve got a good opportunity to go to third base,” Torres said. “It was a bad decision.”
It has been a tough week on the basepaths for the Yankees. On Monday, Sanchez jogged to first base after grounding to shortstop with the bases loaded, ending the game. And in the second inning on Saturday, again with the bases loaded, Tyler Wade hit into a double play that didn’t require the ball to travel beyond a foot. His tap off the plate was quickly smothered by the catcher, Perez, who stepped on home plate and tagged out Wade, standing flat-footed in the batter’s box.
Boone did not criticize Wade for not running, calling it a “weird play.”
But it was Torres’s attempt to make an extra play that ultimately cost the Yankees a chance to have the tying run in scoring position.
“That definitely hurt and definitely was a mistake,” Boone said. “I like the fact that he was in position to make a read, but it wasn’t the right read.”
In the following inning, a three-run homer by Kansas City’s Brian Goodwin put the game away.
