TAMPA — Luis Severino doesn’t eat enough rice. But if his offseason diet helps him stay healthy and pitch for a full season so he can help the Yankees try to win a championship, the right-hander will take that trade. Plus, his personal chef has made the rice substitute taste better.
“He makes quinoa, quinoa salad, something called couscous — I don’t know what the heck it is, but it’s actually really good,” Severino said Wednesday before a workout at Steinbrenner Field.
He also said, “It’s hard, but if you want something, you have to make sacrifices.”
Part of Severino’s plan for the offseason was to eat better. When he added his workouts to this, he lost about 15 pounds by the time spring training started. He said he would have been just as motivated in the offseason even if this wasn’t the last year of his contract, but since it is, it’s important for him to have his first healthy season since 2018.
“My focus always is to be good,” he said. “The only thing in front of me from doing that is being healthy all year. I know the kind of pitcher that I am when I’m healthy and I know the kind of pitcher I can be. I just want to be healthy all year and do the same job I’ve been doing.”
After only making three starts from 2019 to 2021 because of injuries, including Tommy John surgery, Severino had a good comeback season last year. In 102 innings, he struck out 112 batters and had an ERA of 3.18. But he could only make 19 starts because he was on the 60-day injured list for a while. He didn’t like that at the time because he thought the 15-day IL was all he needed for his strained right lat.
Still, Severino said it was “an encouraging year,” and the Yankees agreed, picking up his $15 million option for 2023. But this year, Severino, who is 29, has even more money on the line. If he stays healthy, he might look at the four-year, $72 million deal that Taijaun Walker got from the Phillies this winter as a similar contract.
So far as Severino knows, the Yankees haven’t brought up the idea of an extension, but he said he’d love to spend the rest of his career in pinstripes.
“The only thing for me on the line [this year] is winning the World Series,” Severino said. “That’s the main goal for me. Regardless of what happens, if I’m healthy, I’m going to make money. So I just need to focus on the main goal and the main goal for the whole team is winning a championship.”
If the Yankees reach their goal, it will probably be in large part because of their strong rotation, which was on full display on Wednesday. Each Severino, Gerrit Cole, and Carlos Rodon faced the top half of the Yankees’ starting lineup for two innings of live batting practice. This gave them a chance to show how powerful they could be.
“Sevy looks fresh,” Cole said. “Some things about him remind me of a wild horse. He has a lot of power at the moment.”
Maybe his offseason has something to do with it. He said that Severino wasn’t trying to lose weight, but that he was “just eating healthy and working a little harder than in years past.” Early on in camp, he could tell something was different because he had more energy when he woke up and could do more work.
Severino had hoped to do that for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic next month, but the Yankees wouldn’t let him because of his history of injuries.
“I knew it was not going to be easy to convince the Yankees to go there,” he said. “But they had their reasons. It was a valid reason that they told me not to go. I know they had a main goal, which is keeping me healthy the whole year.”
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