WEST SACRAMENTO -- Luis Severino entered Saturday night’s game against the Giants seemingly having turned a corner after his rough start to the season, carrying a 1.88 ERA over his last four starts.
From a pure “stuff” perspective, Severino did not look much different from those previous four outings. He maxed out his fastball at 98.5 mph and generated 11 whiffs. He pounded the zone with strikes on 69 of his 96 pitches and only issued two walks. Yet by the end of the night, Severino’s five runs allowed on 10 hits in six innings dug the A’s a hole too deep to climb out of in a 6-4 loss to San Francisco at Sutter Health Park.
“I feel like I was throwing good pitches,” Severino said. “They had 10 hits, but I feel like there was not a lot of solid contact. There were two homers, and then the Arraez double. Everything else was just bloopers. But they had a good plan and they executed it. They did a good job.”
The Statcast numbers will back up Severino’s statements. Of his 21 batted ball events (all fair balls that result in hits, outs or errors), Giants hitters averaged only an exit velocity of 87.3 mph against him. Most of the damage came off the bat of Casey Schmitt, who took Severino deep twice, first hitting a solo shot in the first before slugging a two-run blast in the fifth.
The other two runs off Severino came in a two-run third that featured three singles, all with an exit velocity under 85 mph, including an 84.8 mph two-run single by Willy Adames to cap the frame.
The sample size of Severino’s polarizing home/road splits has become large enough that it must be acknowledged here. In four home starts this season, Severino now holds a 5.55 ERA (15 earned runs in 24 1/3 innings) versus a 3.56 ERA in six road starts. Since joining the A’s last season, he’s 3-11 with a 5.91 ERA in 19 career starts at Sutter Health Park as opposed to 6-2 with a 3.02 ERA in 14 starts on the road.
Fair or not, Severino’s home struggles have become a narrative. Both Severino and manager Mark Kotsay, however, did not see anything drastically different from the road version of himself.
“The ball was up tonight,” Kotsay said. “Adames took some good at-bats. Obviously, Schmitt was an issue. Sevy gave us six and still kept us in the game. Overall, they swung the bats tonight. They hit mistakes. … But I thought Sevy’s outing was a couple of pitches away from being really good.”
With Saturday marking game No. 5 of a stretch of 16 games in 16 days, Severino did succeed in providing length with six innings. That allowed the A’s bullpen to preserve some of its arms as Scott Barlow and Mark Leiter Jr. pitched the final three innings and kept it close enough for the A’s to make it a game with a three-run homer by Brent Rooker in the eighth.
“My plan is to go out there and at least get six innings for my team,” Severino said. “We’re on a 16-day stretch, so every inning matters for us. I’m really happy to go out there and at least give my team six innings.”
For the A’s (23-22) to maintain their first-place standing in the AL West and make that playoff push they desire, Severino needs to perform as their ace. They’ll also need to get back to the defense they displayed before this week. After committing two errors Saturday, including one on a grounder hit by Adames in the seventh that set up an RBI double by Matt Chapman one batter later, the A’s have now committed six errors in their last five games after just eight through their first 40.
“We’re in a little bit of a lull defensively,” Kotsay said. “We played really good defense for five-plus weeks. You can’t maintain that level of play throughout the whole season. You’ll have some games where you don’t play well defensively. … We’re still a good defensive team, just in a little bit of a lull right now.”