Mets' Luis Severino tosses shutout in the face of workload concerns

NEW YORK — Inside the New York Mets’ dugout midway through the eighth inning, Luis Severino maintained eye contact with Carlos Mendoza while he told the manager that he still felt strong. As they talked, Mendoza felt the stares from other players who wondered if Severino would stay in the game. At the end of the brief discussion, Mendoza told Severino, OK, he’d allow him the opportunity to take the mound for the ninth inning, but then he followed Severino down the tunnel, anyway.

“I wanted to make sure,” Mendoza said.

When he caught up to him near the Mets’ batting cages, Mendoza told Severino, “I don’t want you to be a hero here.”

With a straight face, Severino responded, “I’m good.”

Minutes later, Severino proved it by putting the finishing touches on a shutout. In the Mets’ 4-0 win over the Miami Marlins on Saturday at Citi Field, Severino allowed four hits and one walk, and he hit one batter. He recorded eight strikeouts. The ninth inning featured the hardest ball he had thrown all game: a strike timed at 98.6 mph.

Luis Severino tosses his first shutout since 2018! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/iF5mEQBaP8

— MLB (@MLB) August 17, 2024

Severino threw 113 pitches — his most since throwing 115 on Aug. 3, 2018.

The discussions between Mendoza and Severino ahead of the ninth inning involved high stakes. There was Severino’s workload. There was the Mets’ need for a win on Saturday. There was the calculus of the Mets’ quest for a playoff spot over the final fourth of the season and Severino’s role in that endeavor. Mendoza, a first-year manager, weighed it all.

For the Mets (64-59), keeping Severino healthy and productive is critical. As a whole, the starting rotation has produced mediocre results, but Sean Manaea and Severino stand out as the most consistent options in terms of length and quality. But Severino is now up to 142 2/3 innings and may approach twice his workload from a nightmarish injury-plagued 2023 with the New York Yankees in which he threw 89 1/3 innings.

Severino, who is on a one-year deal, hasn’t thrown more than 90 innings in any season since he threw 191 1/3 innings in 2018. If the Mets stick with a strict five-man rotation, Severino would have about six or seven starts left. That’s a decent amount of time remaining in the regular season.

Thus, on one hand, Severino’s dominance over the young, aggressive and meager Marlins answered some concerns over his performance and workload. He’s clearly in a good spot. But on the other hand, it also continued to raise some concerns over his work capacity going forward.

“I feel really good,” Severino said. “I feel healthy. I haven’t felt like that in a little bit. When you feel healthy, it’s better to compete.”

Mendoza’s decision to stick with Severino ended up being the right call for Saturday. Multiple evaluators who watched the outing described it as low-stress. Severino needed just three pitches in the third inning and just four pitches in the sixth. By the end of the eighth inning, he had thrown 97 pitches. In the ninth, he didn’t just throw his hardest pitch — he also fired his second-, third- and fourth-hardest pitches.

Over Severino’s past few starts, club officials had closely monitored his velocity readings, ever since he experienced a dip in one outing. But Severino has maintained that he has felt healthy, and he has passed all of the club’s markers for confirming such things. He then proved it in a big way.

Though it worked on Saturday, rival evaluators watching the Mets wondered: Will the decision end up being the right call for the rest of the season or will they end up paying a price? Maybe. Maybe not.

It depends on Severino. Dating back to that start against the Minnesota Twins a couple of weeks ago in which his velocity went down, Severino had given up 14 earned in 13 innings over three games, raising his ERA from 3.58 to 4.17. The latest gem, however, put things back on track, lowering his ERA to 3.91.

And it depends on Mendoza and the manager’s relationship with his players. Before and after the shutout, Mendoza said he was not concerned with Severino’s performance or workload, citing his conversations with the starter between outings. Mendoza demonstrated feel for the situation with someone in Severino whom he has known for several years. He trusted his player (“He has given me a lot of confidence,” Severino said). And he probably sensed what the moment meant for his other players, too.

After all, these things don’t happen often. Severino became the first Mets starter to throw a shutout since Jacob deGrom did it on April 23, 2021. In the eighth inning, Francisco Lindor told Severino to convince Mendoza to keep him in the game. And after Severino pulled off the feat, Pete Alonso said, “That was unbelievable.”

With his first pitch of the ninth inning, Severino hit a batter. When Mendoza emerged out of the dugout to meet with Severino on the mound, the crowd booed. Severino has said before that he can sense when Mendoza is coming for a chat or to take him out. As Mendoza trotted toward him, Severino stared at him, which Mendoza took to mean, “Give me one more batter.” Severino then said as much, repeatedly telling Mendoza, “Give it to me. Give it to me.”

The crowd cheered as soon as Mendoza turned to walk away from the mound with Severino still standing on it.

A huge roar from the Citi Field crowd as Carlos Mendoza leaves Luis Severino in after a mound visit pic.twitter.com/6ZFcjUVvux

— SNY (@SNYtv) August 17, 2024

“At that point, I know I have Edwin Díaz ready,” Mendoza said. “The velo was still good. It was just one pitch. And the previous three at-bats against (the next batter Jesús Sánchez), he was throwing fastballs by him. So, I said, ‘OK, I will give you one more. Give me everything you got. This is your game.’ And he was pretty sure.

“So it was an easier decision for me. Obviously, I have a responsibility not only with the player but with the team. My job is to put the team in position to have success, right? I felt at that time, that was the case.”

Throughout the ninth inning, the crowd chanted, “Se-vy! Se-vy!”

“That was really fun to go out there and compete for this fanbase,” Severino said. “It was really good. They gave me a little bit of force to go out there and compete for everybody.”

(Photo: Lucas Boland / USA Today)