Yankees 3, Royals 0: Luis Severino dominates in eight shutout innings

For a rotation that has struggled a bit as of late, Luis Severino was exactly what the Yankees needed Wednesday night. The young starter went eight innings without giving up a run to the Kansas City Royals, striking out seven batters and walking just one. It was the longest scoreless outing of his career to this point.

The game started sort of ominously for New York when Jacoby Ellsbury crashed into a wall to catch a long fly ball from the first batter of the game. Ellsbury made the catch, but got up wobbly. Joe Girardi and the trainer came out, provided smelling salts, and Ellsbury stayed in the game...temporarily.

Ellsbury left before his first at-bat and was diagnosed with a concussion and sprained neck. He’ll almost certainly be heading to the disabled list very shortly. Mason Williams, Rob Refsnyder, and Dustin Fowler are all options to replace Ellsbury on the roster with the first two being much more likely than the latter.

Offensively, Didi Gregorius was the leader for New York. He homered for the third time since returning from injury to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead in the third. He also scored the final run of the game on a Brett Gardner single in the seventh. Matt Holliday was responsible for the other run of the game when his sac fly brought home Gary Sanchez.

Chase Headley continued his struggles at the plate with an 0-3 night. Heading into tonight he was batting .163/.209/.260 since April 21. Whether or not the Yankees feel as though they can keep him as a starter with so many options knocking on the door at the minor league level remains to be seen, but the returns since his hot start have been pretty bad to say the least.

The Yankees move to 2.5 games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles, thanks to their win and the Twins’ sweep of the O’s. New York will try to take the series from Kansas City in the finale tomorrow afternoon at 1:05 pm ET with Masahiro Tanaka on the mound looking for better results than he’s had as of late.