Luis Severino

He was ranked 35th by Baseball America.

Luis Severino (born February 20, 1994) is a Dominican professional baseball pitcher for the New York Mets of Major League Baseball (MLB).

He has previously played in MLB for the New York Yankees.

Severino signed with the Yankees as an international free agent in 2011, and made his MLB debut in 2015.

Severino signed with the New York Yankees as an international free agent on December 26, 2011, agreeing on a $225,000 signing bonus.

He had agreed to terms to sign with the Colorado Rockies, but a Yankees scout matched their offer and convinced Severino to play for the team he had grown up as a fan of.

At the time, he could throw his fastball at 91 mph. He made his professional debut for the Dominican Summer League (DSL) Yankees 1 that year.

He started 14 games, pitching to a 4–2 win–loss record with a 1.68 earned run average (ERA) and 45 strikeouts in 64 1⁄3 innings.

He started 2013 with the DSL Yankees 1 and was promoted to the Charleston RiverDogs of the Class A South Atlantic League during the season.

He finished 4–2 with a 2.45 ERA, 53 strikeouts over 44 innings in 10 games (eight starts).

His fastball velocity reached 97 mph at Charleston.

Prior to the 2014 season, Baseball America ranked him as the Yankees ninth-best prospect.

Severino started the season with Charleston before being promoted to the Tampa Yankees of the Class A-Advanced Florida State League.

After his promotion to Tampa, he was selected to appear in the 2014 All-Star Futures Game in July.

After the Futures Game, he was again promoted, to the Trenton Thunder of the Class AA Eastern League.

Combined between the three teams, Severino went 6–5 win–loss record with a 2.46 ERA, 127 strikeouts, and 27 walks in 24 games (all starts) and 113 innings pitched.

Though Severino set a career-high with 113 innings pitched in the 2014 season, Cashman said that Severino would not be limited in how many innings he throws over the remainder of the 2015 season, in part because they limited his innings earlier in the season.

Yankees' manager Joe Girardi set Severino's major league debut for August 5.

Severino pitched five innings in his debut, allowing two hits, two runs (one earned), with seven strikeouts and no walks.

Before the start of the 2015 season, Severino was ranked the best prospect in the Yankees farm system and the 23rd best out of all minor league players by MLB Pipeline.

Severino began the 2015 season with Trenton, where he had a 2–2 win–loss record with a 3.32 ERA and 48 strikeouts in 38 innings pitched across eight games started.

He received a promotion to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders of the Class AAA International League, where he worked with RailRiders' pitching coach Scott Aldred to improve his pitching delivery.

Severino pitched to a 7–0 win–loss record and a 1.91 ERA in 11 games started for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre through the end of July.

With the Yankees in the postseason race, the Yankees made Severino unavailable in trade discussions for pitchers David Price, Cole Hamels, and Johnny Cueto at the MLB trade deadline of July 31.

With a late-July injury to Michael Pineda, and the Yankees not acquiring a starting pitcher before the trade deadline, Brian Cashman, the general manager of the Yankees, announced that Severino's next start would come in the major leagues against the Boston Red Sox, the primary rival of the Yankees, at Yankee Stadium.

At age 21, he was the youngest pitcher to make a start in the 2015 MLB season.

Additionally, he became the first Al Pitcher in MLB history to strike out seven hitters while walking none and allowing no more than two hits in their major league debut.

He ended his rookie season having started 11 games, pitching 62 1⁄3 innings with a 5–3 record, 2.89 ERA and 56 strikeouts.

After a rough 2016 season, he broke out as one of the league's best pitchers in 2017, being named an All-Star and finishing third in the American League Cy Young Award vote.

Severino began the 2016 season in the Yankees starting rotation.

In a game against the Chicago White Sox on May 13, 2016, Severino left the game with an apparent injury after giving up 7 runs in 2.2 innings.

The next day, he was placed on the 15-day disabled list due to right triceps inflammation.

On May 30, 2016, he was activated from the disabled list, and optioned to the Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.

He was called back up on July 25 and was primarily used as a reliever for the remainder of the season.

On September 26, Severino was ejected for the first time in his Major League career after hitting Justin Smoak with a pitch.

This followed after he hit Josh Donaldson on the elbow and Blue Jays starter J. A. Happ hit Chase Headley with a pitch in the first inning.

Severino finished the 2016 season with a 3–8 record and an ERA of 5.83.

He was also named an All-Star in 2018.

He missed most of the 2019 and 2021 seasons and all of the 2020 season due to various injuries.

Severino signed with the Mets after the 2023 season.