Luis Severino moves from Yankees to Mets on 1-year, $13 million deal, per report
Luis Severino is coming off the worst season of his career
Luis Severino is staying in New York. Just not with the Yankees.
The veteran right-hander is signing a one-year, $13 million contract with the New York Mets after nine years as a Yankee, according to ESPN's Jeff Passan.
The swap in teams comes after a career-worst season for Severino in 2023. Once one of the Yankees' most reliable pitchers, he struggled to a 6.65 ERA, the seventh-worst mark in the majors among 172 pitchers with at least 80 innings pitched. His season ended prematurely due to an oblique strain.
The former two-time All-Star signed a four-year, $40 million contract with the Yankees in 2019, with a club option for 2023, then missed all of 2020 and most of 2021 due to Tommy John surgery. He seemed to return to form in 2022, with a 3.18 ERA in 102 innings while missing time due to a lat strain, but the bottom fell out this year.
It was a bad time to enter free agency for the 29-year-old Severino, and he ultimately landed on a one-year deal with decent money. Now his plan will be to bounce back and reenter the market for the deal he wanted next year.
For the Mets, this deal adds a starting pitcher to a rotation that direly needed (and arguably still needs) depth. There isn't a lot of proven MLB talent behind Kodai Senga and José Quintana, with names such as Tylor McGill, David Peterson and Joey Lucchesi occupying a rotation that saw the exits of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander this summer.
The Mets will be looking for more reinforcements than Severino, though, and their most notable target, like many other teams, will likely be Japanese free agent Yoshinobu Yamamato.
