ATLANTA — Aaron Boone was encouraged and Luis Severino felt relieved.
The struggling right-hander may not have won Tuesday night, or even pitched into the fifth inning, but he was better than he had been in his last several outings.
The Yankees will take that at this point, considering how badly it has gone for Severino this year.
“I feel happy the way I felt on the mound, the way I competed. I feel like I’m improving,” Severino said after he allowed five runs (three earned) in four innings in the Yankees’ 5-0 loss to the Braves at sold-out Trust Park. “A lot of swings and misses. I haven’t done that in a long time. This is a great team, this is the best team in the league right now. So just seeing them swing and miss at my fastball and my cutter tonight, it was good to see.”
Severino was undone by the home run ball, a three-run shot by Marcell Ozuna in the first and a two-run shot by Ronald Acuña Jr. in the fourth.
But Severino felt his stuff was there.
He struck out five and got 12 misses on 41 swings.
That was the most swings and misses he has gotten since a July 17 start against the Angels, when he recorded 13 whiffs on 53 swings. He averaged 97.9 mph with his fastball, his best velocity this season, and his ERA actually went down, from 8.06 to 7.98.
It looked like Severino would escape the first inning without any damage being done.
But after walking Matt Olson with two outs in the first, he served up a made-to-order slider that Ozuna parked over the center-field fence.
It was the worst pitch he made all night, and continued his first-inning woes.
“After that, I thought he threw the ball well. It’s as good of stuff as I’ve seen,” manager Aaron Boone said. “I thought the life was there. It just felt like [he was pitching] with more conviction. … Not a good line, but I think that was a much better Sevy than we’ve seen.”
Severino has now given up 16 runs in the opening inning of his last four performances and the Yankees are 3-10 the last 13 times he’s taken the mound.
But he felt this was a step in the right direction.
He was thinking less about his past struggles and attacking more, believing in his stuff and not worrying if he was throwing the wrong pitches.
“I tried to focus on just being me and not worry about numbers and what’s the best pitch for the hitter,” Severino said. “That was Sevy out there, trying to compete.”
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