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Luis Severino is a two-time All-Star, with a 99 mph fastball, and 42 big-league wins.
But the Yanks may thank their former ace for the first save of his career.
It won't appear in a box score. But it is still a Rolaids Moment when Severino parachuted onto the mound and started fireballing his way back into the playoff rotation. Severino has saved a rotation on life support after 18-game winner Domingo German got elbowed off of the roster for his possible role in a domestic violence case.
The Yanks had James Paxton, who stopped losing two months ago, and Masahiro Tanaka, whose season reads like an EKG but has been a robust postseason pitcher. The rest was a relative wasteland, with graybeard CC Sabathia, unreliable J.A. Happ, and reliever Chad Green as possible Game 3 starters.
In comes Severino, who chucked nine scoreless innings over his first two starts, allowing five hits and fanning 13 batters.
While Tanaka has the October pedigree, he's hardly steamrolling into the playoffs, having allowed at least four earned runs in four of his last nine starts, with a 4.50 ERA in September, allowing 27 hits in 22 innings. Though Happ has been better in September (1.61 ERA), he has pitched fewer than six innings in 23 of his 30 starts and has an abysmal 5.48 ERA over 11 playoff appearances. Sabathia, the sagacious southpaw with 251 career wins and a borderline case for Cooperstown, hasn't notched a single win since June 24.
The Yanks just went a la carte with their bullpen last night, plowing through 11 pitchers in 11 innings in Tampa, allowing just one run, until the 12th pitcher lost the game in the 12th inning. It's a cute trick a week before the season ends. And it's hardly a big deal that you lose a 56th game when you've won 102 games. But it's notable because the Astros, all summer stalking the Yanks for the best record in the AL, have 54 losses, with only five games left.
The Bronx Bombers will bash 300 homers this year, shredding the MLB record for one team. They will also score at least 930 runs, which will likely lead MLB. (Since 1900, the record for most runs scored by a single team was set by the 1931 Yankees, with 1,067.)
All season, many MLB fans - Boomer Esiason most vocal among them - have pounded home the importance of home-field advantage in the ALCS, when the Yanks and Astros should fight for a spot in the Fall Classic.
The point is more poignant when you know the Astros have three certified aces in their rotation. So while the Yankees can't match Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, and Zack Greinke heater-for-heater they don't have to. With relief pitching a pillar of playoff success, the Yankees can embrace the fact that they have the best bullpen in baseball, with a 7.6 WAR, according to fangraphs. Which means that Severino, who can't be expected to scratch through seven or eight innings, need only give the club five or six.
The Yankees have been muted with their pitching probables over the next four games, with only Jonathan Loaisiga assured to start Wednesday night. The Rays - embroiled in a three-team scuffle for a wild-card spot - have way more incentive to win this game. Then the Yanks fly to Texas to play the most mediocre Rangers. Perhaps the Yankees have resigned themselves to the second-seed in the AL playoffs, and are saving their hottest arms for the cooler nights ahead.
Enter Luis Severino, who's had a cinematic sense of time and place. Ten days ago, the Yanks had just two surefire playoff starters while the playoff odds slanted heavily in favor of the Astros. But the Yanks, a team toiling without the pitcher with the most wins on the staff, have found another up their pinstriped sleeve. It's the rare moment when Severino, who has never notched a save, could save the postseason in the Bronx.