CINCINNATI — Luis Severino looked, in the words of one rival scout who typically doesn’t traffic in the superlative, “awesome” in his 2023 debut.
The Yankees would categorize this trip, which contained seemingly a season’s worth of oddities, the same way.
With Severino throwing fire over 4 2/3 innings and the offense, which was without a resting Aaron Judge, still producing homers by Harrison Bader and Gleyber Torres, the Yankees finished a seven-game trip with a 4-1 victory over the Reds Sunday in front of 33,828 at Great American Ball Park that completed a three-game sweep.
“Great trip,” Aaron Boone said.
The Yankees manager wasn’t around to see the vast majority of the contest, ejected in the bottom of the first inning arguing a run he didn’t believe the Reds deserved after a replay review, though Boone said afterward, “I shouldn’t have gotten kicked out there, my bad,” and adding later of the call: “in the end, it was probably the right thing.”
Boone’s club, in going 6-1 on a trip that started with four combative games against the Blue Jays, won for the 14th time in 19 tries in improving to 29-20 overall.
Clay Holmes did load the bases with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to insert some late drama, but Will Benson bounced back to him to end it.
The Yankees are off Monday before starting a three-game series against the Orioles Tuesday night at the Stadium.
“I think we learned a lot about ourselves,” Bader, whose two-run homer in the fifth gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead, said of the trip that began with the circus-like series in Toronto. “I think we did a really good job of just staying in the pocket, playing our game, staying in our clubhouse and focusing on what we do really well to be successful.”
Severino, who started the season on the injured list with a right lat strain, allowed one run, four hits and a walk in his outing. Severino, his fastball sitting 97-99 mph, struck out five.
The one run Severino allowed entailed a dash of controversy.
After Reds starter Hunter Greene, a righthander taken second overall in the 2017 draft, struck out one in a perfect 11-pitch top of the first, Severino walked Cincinnati leadoff man Jonathan India on four pitches to open the bottom half. Severino struck out Matt McLain swinging at a changeup and then, appropriate for this trip, some strangeness.
Spencer Steer sliced a fly ball toward the line in right where Jake Bauers attempted to make a sliding basket catch. The ball popped out as Bauers slid into the wall, but first base umpire Nestor Ceja emphatically ruled it a foul ball. The Reds challenged and the call was overturned – replays showed the ball would have landed fair – and India, who appeared to slow up as he headed for third because of the initial foul call, was awarded home. Replay decisions cannot be argued, something Boone wasn’t arguing, but he did want an explanation on India being awarded home. It is always within the umpire’s discretion to place runners in such situations and Boone questioned India being awarded home when players, the runner especially, were under the impression the ball was dead.
“I took exception to that and at least wanted to know the explanation for it and didn’t really get that,” Boone said.
Boone’s third ejection of the season, and second of this trip, ended up merely an entertaining sidenote as Bader’s 411-foot homer gave the Yankees the lead for good in the fifth. Torres made it 3-1 in the sixth with an opposite-field shot off Greene – who allowed four run, four hits and a walk over seven innings but did strike out 10 – the second baseman’s seventh homer. Anthony Volpe’s RBI double in the seventh made it 4-1.
“Great showing,” Boone said. “Not the easiest thing, these 11:30 [a.m.] games, and these guys came out here ready to go.”
