Jose Quintana pitched the game of the season for the Mets on Sunday. A day later, Luis Severino essentially said, “Hold my beer.”
If you blinked you missed it, but on this comfortable spring night Severino accelerated rapid fire through the Cubs, taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning before Dansby Swanson’s bloop toward left field was too high for Francisco Lindor’s outstretched glove.
It was the only hit Severino allowed over 101 pitches. He doffed his cap to the saluting crowd at Citi Field as he departed the field after recording the final out in the eighth. But at that point the Cubs had their first run on the board — after Joey Wendle had erroneously decided to try for an inning-ending double play on Nick Madrigal’s slow grounder to third instead of firing home — and the Mets’ victory was now in jeopardy.
And then it vanished, with Christopher Morel’s two-run homer against Edwin Diaz in the ninth inning that sent the Mets to a 3-1 loss.
That’s just flat-out cruel.
But you take from it that Severino is back pitching at a level scarcely seen since his prime years with the Yankees, before Tommy John surgery and other assorted injuries turned him into a chronic rehabber.
“He was probably as good as I have seen,” said manager Carlos Mendoza, who spent six seasons on the Yankees coaching staff. “Especially using his fastball, in and out, up and down, it was electric.”
The calendar will turn to May with Severino holding a 2.31 ERA — with three straight starts of at least six innings (no small feat on this team) — as the rock of a rotation that is still at least four weeks away from Kodai Senga’s return.
Senga threw live batting practice in the afternoon, the next step in a shoulder rehab that began toward the end of spring training. But the Mets won’t see Senga in a game for them until at least May 27, the earliest he can return from the IL.
Until then, and perhaps beyond, it’s the 30-year-old Severino leading the charge.
“I feel very good,” Severino said. “I think before when I was a little younger I was thinking too much about striking everybody out and right now I am just focused on getting people out and getting deep in the game. I am in a different position right now.”
A day earlier Quintana had talked his way into remaining in the game to strike out the Cardinals’ Willson Contreras and complete the eighth inning. The Mets hadn’t had a starting pitcher work even into the seventh inning all season, but Quintana set the bar higher.
Only fittingly, Severino’s flirtation with history came on the two-year anniversary of the Mets’ last no-hitter. That was the combined no-no that featured Tylor Megill, Drew Smith, Joely Rodriguez, Seth Lugo and Edwin Diaz handling the Phillies.
The date wasn’t lost on Diaz.
“I was in the bullpen knowing I could come in, the same situation as two years ago,” Diaz said.
Brandon Nimmo and Mendoza both pointed to the same juncture of the game, after Severino recorded the final out of the sixth at 69 pitches as the moment they knew the veteran right-hander had a shot at history.
Severino returned to the mound in the seventh and needed only 10 pitches to get three outs (he plunked Mike Tauchman) increasing the odds that he might join Johan Santana, holder of the only individual no-hitter in franchise history. This one wasn’t going to take 134 pitches.
But the eighth started with Severino walking Michael Busch, giving the Cubs their third base runner, before Swanson singled over Lindor’s glove on a sinker that Severino said he placed as he had hoped.
“[Swanson] just got it,” Severino said. “[Tomas] Nido and me, we were on the same page all night. He called great pitches and he called that pitch in and I was making sure that pitch was in, so that was a great pitch and credit to him.”
After Wendle whiffed on his double-play attempt in the eighth for the Cubs’ first run, Diaz allowed a double to Tauchman in the ninth and served up a 97 mph fastball that Morel crushed into the left-field seats.
Instead of a historic night it was just one “L” of a Monday for the Mets.