There will be a day this season, or hopefully a day this season, when Luis Severino will pitch for the Yankees. Whenever that day is, if that day comes, it will be just the sixth time Severino has pitched in an actual game since Oct. 8, 2018.

That night, of course, was the night of the disastrous ALDS Game 3. The game in which Severino apparently didn’t know the start time of it and the proceeded to allow six earned runs on seven hits in three-plus innings, including seven batted balls with exit velocities of at least 100 mph.

Since that miserable night, Severino has made three regular-season starts and two postseason starts, all coming in September and October 2019. Severino’s absence during the 2019 regular season cost the Yankees the No. 1 overall seed in the postseason and home-field advantage in yet another ALCS loss to the Astros. His absence in 2020 cost them the best 1-2 rotation punch in the AL and possibly baseball, and led to an early postseason exit.

Severino’s injuries the last two seasons haven’t been unusual for pitchers of his caliber who throw as hard as he does. His workload and additional October starts from a young age all played a factor in the shoulder, lat and elbow injuries, but it didn’t help the Yankees misdiagnosed and mishandled his injuries the way they have for many other Yankees in recent years.

After enduring the mysterious statements, announcements and timelines for Aaron Hicks’ back injury, Giancarlo Stanton’s biceps, shoulder and calf injuries and Aaron Judge’s broken rib and collapsed lung, the story behind Severino’s three injuries is just as confusing.

How did we get here? Here being Severino having pitched 20 1/3 innings for the Yankees since October 2018. Let’s go through it all.

On March 5, 2019, Severino is scratched from his first spring training start after saying he experienced a “pull” in his right arm. The following day, he’s diagnosed with rotator cuff inflammation and is shut down for two weeks. The right-hander tells the media it’s “nothing bad” and thinks he’ll be able to begin a throwing program after his two-week shutdown. He adds that it’s better to deal with the injury now than “midseason.”

Less than three weeks later, on March 23, Severino is examined and no issues are found, allowing him to begin to work his way back. In early April, Severino progresses to long tossing at 130 feet, but doesn’t feel well enough to begin throwing off a mound.

On April 9, the Yankees announce Severino had an MRI the day before which revealed a Grade 2 (out of 3) lat strain. The team announced he would be shut down from throwing for six weeks.

“I don’t know if relief’s the right word, but it’s a little bit like, ‘OK, now we know what it is,” Aaron Boone said. “A little relief that it’s not a surgery thing. There’s a little comfort in knowing this is what it is. It appears to be treatable. It’s going to take some time and hopefully we’ll get a healthy, strong and fresh Sevy back for a good portion of the season.”

On June 30, as the Yankees opened a two-game series with the Red Sox in London, Boone reported Severino had suffered a setback while rehabbing his lat injury. An MRI showed his lat was only 90 percent healed. Yes, Severino was rehabbing with an injury not yet fully healed.

“Clearly, in hindsight, he never should have started throwing program,” Cashman said. “He passed all his physical testing. He was strong. They made a determination not to do an MRI. And normally they don’t do an MRI to follow up after the down period of time. They test him out.”

Despite being the Yankees’ best starting pitcher, the most valuable member of their pitching staff, and an arm the Yankees committed $40 million before the shoulder injury, “they” determined not to make sure he was completely healed before allowing him to return to throwing.

“He doesn’t like going in the MRI tube,” Cashman said. “So it’s something I know he would have pushed back on. But clearly, if we could’ve turn the clock back, we would have done an MRI maybe three weeks ago now. But it wasn’t done. We can’t change that. So we just did one before we left here, after the complaint, and we’ll do another one now, and we’ll keep doing them until we know he’s clear.”

Severino returns to the Yankees on Sept. 17 and shuts out the Angels for four innings. Five days later, he throws a five-inning shutout against the Blue Jays. He makes one last regular-season start on Sept. 28 and finishes his three-start postseason preparation with the following line: 12 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 6 BB, 17 K, 1.50 ERA, 1.000 WHIP.

Severino makes two postseason starts (Game 3 of both the ALDS and ALCS). After his ALCS Game 3 start and while preparing to start a potential Game 7, Severino alerts the Yankees of right elbow discomfort.

On Feb. 20, 2020, Severino is scratched from throwing his second bullpen session of spring training and doesn’t participate in pitchers’ fielding drills either. At the end of the day’s workout, Boone says Severino has been dealing with forearm discomfort that started after Game 3 of the 2019 ALCS, which was more than four months prior.

“I would say that the October issue was more of a low-level signal,” Cashman said. “He had mentioned a little soreness … It was more of a throwaway comment.”

Ah, yes, the old throwaway comment from your best starting pitcher about his throwing elbow.

It had become commonplace for a Yankee to suffer an injury from the previous season and months prior and for it to go untreated. James Paxton had to go undergo back surgery at the start of spring training in 2020 for an injury suffered in his last regular-season start in 2019, and Aaron Judge would be out as well with a mysterious shoulder injury sustained during the 2019 season that wouldn’t be properly diagnosed as a broken rib and collapsed lung until three-plus months later into 2020.

Severino spoke to the media and said the discomfort is in one spot in the forearm near the elbow, the ultimate precursor to Tommy John surgery.

“My elbow, shoulder and my whole arm is pretty good,” Severino said. “Like I said, I’ve been throwing really hard, I feel like my fastball is running pretty good, so I’m not worried about a spot other than that one.”

Cashman announced Severino had two MRIs in the offseason, one in December and one in January. For a pitcher who “doesn’t like going in the MRI tube,” that’s two MRIs in two months on top of all the MRIs he underwent in 2019. According to Cashman, Severino also had a CT scan for his elbow. All tests were negative.

“I just want to pitch,” Severino said. “I’ve been doing all the things that they wanted me to do in the offseason to come here healthy. I was pretty good, I was feeling healthy until [Thursday].”

Boone spoke to the media and like pulling teeth, some more information started to come to light. Severino had been treated with anti-inflammatories in January, and testing revealed a “loose body” near his elbow, which the team attributed to an incidental, unrelated finding. Because whenever there is a loose body floating around in your elbow, it’s nothing to worry about! Boone continued that Severino had stayed away from his changeup in the spring, and when he began throwing it, the pain returned.

“We reintroduced [the] changeup the last couple of days on flat ground, no issues with that,” Boone said. “And then last night, just sitting at home, he started to feel that soreness again. So we’ll shut him down here for a couple days and hopefully try and get to what exactly is going on in there.”

Cashman said Severino was taking a new anti-inflammatory and would see team physician Dr. Ahmad on Friday.

“Injuries are part of the game,” Cashman said as the general manager overseeing the team that set the all-time record for most players placed on the injured list in a single season. “Dealing with injuries is part of the game. Assessing what a particular injury is and the level of that injury is obviously very difficult.”

Despite the pain, discomfort and Severino pointing to the spot on his forearm, Cashman said no new tests were scheduled. He also said he didn’t think his pitcher’s current issue was related to his 2019 shoulder and lat injuries.

The plan for no new tests didn’t last long as Severino would have an MRI arthrogram five days after being shut down, and the arthrogram showed a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament. On Feb. 25, Cashman announced Severino needed Tommy John surgery.

“Yesterday, it was the first time that those repeated physical testings showed he was getting response,” Cashman said. “So the conclusion with the physical and the MRI arthrogram is Tommy John.”

The Yankees plan on getting Severino back sometime during the 2021 season, and as of now, they don’t have a contingency plan if he suffers any setbacks and is unavailable in 2021. The Yankees lost three starting pitchers to free agency and have yet to add to a rotation, which currently only has four actual members, including two rookies and a pitcher 48 innings removed from his own Tommy John surgery.

The Yankees desperately need Severino to return in 2021 and return as his old self. With Severino healthy and right, the Yankees have the best front end of a rotation in the AL. Without him, they’re in a lot of trouble.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

If you can supposedly never have enough starting pitching, the Yankees have decided to not really have any at all. After not having anything close to resembling a rotation when this past October rolled around, the Yankees’ current “rotation” can’t even be considered one.

A year ago, the Yankees’ on-paper rotation was Cole, Severino, Paxton, Tanaka and Happ/Montgomery. It was arguably the best rotation in baseball, and it never got to be anything more than a rotation on paper and in theory. A year later, and one of those names has made six starts since the end of 2018 and three of those names are free agents. That leaves Cole and Montgomery.

With only about six weeks until spring training (if the season starts on time). The Yankees’ current “rotation” is Cole, Montgomery, Deivi Garcia and Clarke Schmidt. I’m not even sure who would be the fifth starter if the season started today? The choice would be between a scumbag or an opener. They could go with Michael King, who allowed 23 earned runs in 26 2/3 innings for the 2020 Yankees, including four opening opportunities. Or they did re-sign Nestor Cortes this offseason, who posted a a 5.67 ERA in 66 2/3 innings for the 2019 Yankees, remarkably being included on the major league roster in every month except April despite his ineffectiveness. (Cortes was let go by the historically-bad 2018 Orioles with a 7.71 ERA and then posted 15.26 ERA this past season with the Mariners.) Maybe they can go back to using Cortes to piggyback an opener. Nothing says Yankees baseball like having the highest payroll in the league and trying to piece together nine innings every fifth day.

After Cole, Montgomery becomes the No. 2 because of … seniority? That’s about the only reason for the promotion from the back end of the rotation to the front end since his career stats suggest otherwise. He has one real, full season to his name and missed basically all of 2019 after Tommy John surgery. His 2020 season was so up and down the Yankees desperately tried to avoid using him in the postseason until they were forced to, and he extended the season for an extra day.

For as good as Garcia was at times in his six career regular-season starts in 2020, the Yankees didn’t trust him enough to start a postseason game. Well, they trusted him to “start” it and pitch one inning before giving the ball to Happ to ruin the season in the worst constructed plan by the organization since deciding to give Jacoby Ellsbury $153 million seven-plus years ago.

Then there’s Schmidt, the Yankees’ top pitching prospect, who they called up and used as a reliever, a role he had little to no experience performing in his baseball career, and then finally gave him a start in the final game of the 60-game season. In a season in which every game was equal to 2.7 games in a regular 162-game season, and there needed to be urgency throughout the entire season, the Yankees used Happ for nine starts, King for four “starts” and Loaisiga for “three” starts before finally giving their top pitching prospect his first career start. Garcia and Schmidt weren’t good enough to be completely utilized by the team during the team’s most recent games, though I guess an offseason makes them now capable of being full-time rotation options.

Outside of the Padres’ determination to overtake the Dodgers in the NL West and capitalize on their current window, nearly the entire league has been inactive in building their 2021 rosters. That doesn’t make it acceptable for the Yankees to be inactive and not build for 2021. Just because your friends are smoking cigarettes in junior high school doesn’t mean you should too. Let those idiots ruin themselves.

I understand Montgomery’s ERA (5.11) was inflated in 2020 (3.87 FIP) and it was essentially one inning in each start which ruined his top-line numbers, and I believe in him as part of the rotation. I believe in Garcia and Schmidt as well and want both to get a chance to be part of the rotation. That still leaves the question of who is the other member of the staff, and it leaves the Yankees with absolutely no depth in a department which requires some level of depth. Given the Yankees’ inability to properly diagnose and handle injuries over the last two seasons, the current organizational depth chart leaves zero room for injury or error for an organization needing a lot of room for error to operate.

Right now, the Yankees’ plan appears to be to get Luis Severino back midseason. If Severino were to return and immediately be his dominant self, that would certainly length the rotation and give the Yankees the best 1-2 punch in a postseason series in the American League. That’s a BIG “if” requiring no setbacks in his rehab from surgery and needing him to not have to endure the adjustment period nearly every pitcher coming back from Tommy John surgery needs to return to form.

The championship window has already started to close and close much faster than initially anticipated as the team wasted at least two years of the window (if you’re under the impression the window started in 2019 as originally expected) or as many as three years (if you believe the window began in 2018). No matter which year you personally define as the beginning of the current championship window, these Yankees have failed to win to date, and failed to win during the “cheap” seasons of their young core. Now their young core isn’t so young anymore (Severino will be 27 next month, Aaron Judge will be 29 in April, Gary Sanchez just turned 28), isn’t as good (Sanchez) or as healthy (Severino and Judge) as it used to be, and several of the pieces added to the core (Cole, Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Hicks, Luke Voit) are now on the wrong side of 30 or will be by Opening Day.

The AL East is still the Yankees to lose (even if they didn’t win it in the shortened 2020 season). The Rays just traded their best starting pitcher, the Blue Jays still aren’t ready, and the Red Sox and Orioles are as close to being factors in the division as Aaron Boone is to being unanimously accepted as Yankees manager. It could be that the Yankees’ offseason strategy isn’t to get better by adding to or enhancing their roster, but to get better by the rest of the division getting worse.

It’s not how I envisioned this championship window going, but that’s how it’s going.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The Yankees weren’t good enough to win the World Series in 2020. They weren’t good enough to get out of the division series. They weren’t even good enough to win the division. They weren’t good enough to simply play .500 baseball against the Astros for six games in the 2019 ALCS after winning Game 1. They haven’t been good enough to win a championship for 11 straight seasons. They haven’t even been good enough to even get to the World Series for 11 straight seasons.

I’m not sure how removing the team’s best player over the last two seasons makes them better for 2021. It doesn’t. The Yankees need to add to what they were in 2020, not subtract from it, and certainly not subtract their leadoff hitter, their one true contact hitter and the most versatile defensive player on their roster.

It’s been 10 weeks since I wrote What if Yankees Don’t Sign DJ LeMahieu It’s also been 10 weeks of the Yankees wanting him back, and 10 weeks of reports of the Mets being interested in LeMahieu and the Nationals and the Dodgers. The more this drags on, the worse I feel about LeMahieu returning to the Yankees.

A few weeks ago, on YES, Brian Cashman spoke about the negotiations with LeMahieu.

“We’re going to try to keep him here,” Cashman said. “He loves playing in New York, loves playing for the New York Yankees and our fan base, and he clearly loves his teammates. There’s a lot of things in our favor, but ultimately, it comes down to the financial opportunity that we provide, as measured to the financial opportunities that others are providing.”

I don’t know why Cashman can never just simplify his words, always speaking like a high school student trying to make sentences more wordy to meet the requirements of a six-page paper. The Yankees don’t need “to try to keep him,” they can just keep him. They can do this by offering him more money than any other team. 

“We have good intentions when it comes to DJ LeMahieu and trying to re-sign him, and I think he has the same on his end,” Cashman said. “Free agency is very complicated and tricky. It’s a competition. The dance and the conversations will continue. We certainly hope for a positive outcome, but it’s also possible that there isn’t one, so we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Cashman and the Yankees control the potential “outcome” with LeMahieu. They don’t need to hope for a “positive outcome,” they can make it a “positive outcome!” There’s no lottery or drawing to decide which teams signs him. The Yankees don’t have to wait and see. They can get it done whenever they want.

Since 2014, LeMahieu has earned $41,238,500 (according to Baseball Reference). That’s a lot of money! It’s nowhere near what he should have earned given his production, but it’s a lot, and it doesn’t count whatever he signed for as a second-round pick in 2009 and what he earned through 2013 (when he had 227 major league games to his name). LeMahieu was grossly underpaid the last two seasons, as he made just $2 million more than Brett Gardner, $23.3 million less than Jacoby Ellsbury and $28 million less than Giancarlo Stanton, and as a 32-year-old, coming off the best two seasons of his careers, this is his last chance to cash in. While LeMahieu has made somewhere just shy of $50 million, this is likely his last multi-year contract. I’m sure he does love playing for the Yankees like Cashman says, but I’m sure he would love playing for whichever team offers him the most money.

A cool fact about the Yankees is that they make more money than any other team in the league. This fact is often forgotten, largely because Hal Steinbrenner tries to cry poor at any opportunity he can. He did so immediately after the 2020 season, saying on The Michael Kay Show the Yankees lost more money than any other team in the 60-game, fan-less 2020 season. He left out the part about the Yankees making more money than any other team in every other non-60-game, non-fan-less season, which has been every other season of Major League Baseball.

Ultimately (to use Cashman and Aaron Boone’s favorite word), it comes to down if the Yankees offer LeMahieu more than other teams offer him. If the Yankees truly want LeMahieu to be a Yankee in 2021, he will be. They can and will outbid any team for a player they want, and if LeMahieu ends up anywhere other than with the Yankees, we will know that all along the Yankees were OK with letting their best player walk. They would be OK entering 2021 without the team’s best player over the last two seasons. They would be OK with once again not doing everything they could to field the best possible team.

The longer LeMahieu is a free agent, the worse I feel about his chances of remaining a Yankee, and the worse I will feel about the Yankees’ chances in 2021 of doing what they haven’t done in more than a decade.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!