Yankees: Pedro Martinez reveals reason behind Luis Severino’s 2nd half struggles

Hall of Famer, Pedro Martinez, revealed a reason as to why Yankees All-Star Luis Severino struggled so much in the second half of the 2018 season.

The Red Sox legend who mentored Severino in the 2017 offseason after a poor 2016 season noticed that the Yankees All-Star wasn’t himself for an 11 start stretch from Mid-July to early September.

Severino went 14-2 before he made his second straight All-Star game appearance posting a 2.31 ERA with 144 K’s in 128.1 IP. Things dramatically changed post-All-Star for Sevy going 5-6 with a 5.57 ERA while allowing 76 hits and .291 opponent batting average. What could have caused this? Was it poor mechanics or tipping pitches? Something just went wrong out of nowhere without anyone knowing why.

Well, it seems we finally got an answer. According to Pedro, he revealed on October 3 on the TBS pre-game show that Severino spoke to him and it appeared that he wasn’t totally healthy.

Quoted from Mark W. Sanchez of the New York Post:

"“He went through a little bad stretch that everybody goes,” Martinez said before the Yankees and A’s faced off. “And I didn’t know until I finally spoke to Severino that Severino wasn’t totally healthy, and they could not afford to stop him from pitching. So that ended up affecting the Cy Young type of season that he was having and affecting his performance when they needed him the most.”"

I sure was surprised to hear about this since and I’m sure that’s the case with many other Yankee fans but now we have a better idea as to why Sevvy was pitching so poorly.  Pedro mentored Luis in the 2017 offseason after Luis had a horrific 2016 season posting a 5.83 ERA going 3-8 while allowing 78 hits in 71 IP with 66 strikeouts. The results paid off for Sevy in 2017 when he became the unquestioned ace of the Yankees rotation and finished third in the AL Cy Young voting.

Despite Sevy’s poor second half, he did finish strong pitching to a 2.03 ERA in his final three starts which was good enough to earn him the start in Wednesday night’s Wild Card game for the second straight season. This time around Sevy was much more relaxed and prepared for the moment.

We saw the real Sevy last night as he was fantastic over four shutout innings to help the Yankees win 7-2. He only allowed two hits and four walks while striking out seven before he handed the ball off to the bullpen with the Yanks holding a 2-0 lead.

I’m not a Red Sox fan, but I have a lot of respect for Pedro mentoring Sevy and hopefully, he can continue to help out his fellow countryman moving forward even though he’s helping the enemy in the eyes of Red Sox fans.

The next time we see Sevy should be Game 3 in the Bronx Monday against Pedro’s beloved Sox but in the meantime, we’ll all have our eyes glued to the TV tomorrow night when Game 1 kicks off the series from Fenway Park. It’s the first time the rivals have met in October since 2004 so it should be another great chapter in their storied history.