The difference is so stark the Yankees won’t be able to ignore the Luis Severino starting/relief splits this offseason, when the hierarchy constructs and plots its pitching staff for 2017.
“I think that’s going to be a topic of conversation over the winter, I do,” Joe Girardi, who on several prior occasions insisted management viewed the 22-year-old as starting material, said before his team’s 7-3 victory over the Orioles on Saturday. “I’m sure it will be talked about at the table.”
Severino opened the season as a starting pitcher in the wake of his 2015 second half, during which he had made the most significant impression of any midseason rotation call-up since Mel Stottlemyre in 1964.