Yankees fans: We may not see Luis Severino in 2019

Thus far, 2019 has been a lost season for Yankees starter Luis Severino. And so on Monday, the news got a little worse as the right-hander has been shut down again, due to his lingering right lat strain.

There is going to come the point this season where the Yankees will be forced to make the difficult decision as to whether or not bringing back Luis Severino is a wise decision.

I liken Severino’s lingering Grade 2 lat strain to what Kevin Durant recently went through during the NBA Finals. Though we’re talking about two completely different injured body parts, Durant was never truly healthy, despite being cleared by the Warriors medical staff.

Obviously, Durant wanted to play, and Golden State needed him back in the series. However, a severe calf strain actually resulted in a torn Achilles tendon which will cost him the entire 2019/20 season.

So that’s the conundrum — everyone and their mother knows the Yankees need a reliable starting pitcher, but reports now state that Severino will likely be out of action until August.

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Still unable to throw off a mound, Severino’s lat strain is reportedly 90 percent healed, leading general manager Brian Cashman to say he expects Severino to return at some point this season — and perhaps throw again in five-to-seven days.

While I understand how vital Sevy is to the Yanks staff, they are currently 53-28, seven games up in the AL East and 9-1 in their last 10.

Expecting Severino to return this season needs to be taken with a grain of salt. To bring Severino back without 110 percent confidence, and risk losing him to a devastating injury that could cost him most or all of next year isn’t a risk worth taking.

According to Ken Davidoff of the New York Post, it appears the Yankee medical staff’s history of misdiagnosing injuries may have once again played a part in Severino’s delayed return from the injured list. Speaking with Cashman, he said:

“We’ve had a number of injuries this year,” Cashman said. “Most of them are unavoidable. Some of them, we could have done something differently, maybe, along the way. Or the patient could have done something differently along the way. And that’s not atypical”

What exactly does Cashman mean when he says, “the patient could have done something differently”? As Cashman continued to detail to Davidoff, Severino should have never started a throwing program because he was nowhere near healthy enough to do so.

However, even though the 25-year-old passed all the initial medical tests, a follow-up MRI was never conducted because Severino doesn’t like MRI tubes. WHAT?

“…He doesn’t like going in the MRI tube. So it’s something I know he would have pushed back on. But clearly, if we could’ve turned the clock back, (we would have) done an MRI maybe three weeks ago now. But it wasn’t done. We can’t change that.

Interestingly enough, the Yankees never did say precisely how Severino injured himself in the first place. Cashman let it be known back in April he would launch an investigation — and recently indicated he has a better idea about what transpired, but still hasn’t made that info public.