Around the Empire: Yankees news - 5/15/23

NJ Advance Media | Randy Miller: Right-hander Luis Severino successfully completed a rehab start last week, and is expected to take the mound again with Double-A Somerset tomorrow. If he doesn’t have any issues after that outing, he might come off the injured list and start for the Yankees next Sunday in Cincinnati against the Reds.

“I think it’s in play,” said Boone. The Yanks would like to see how his stuff looks before making a decision (though Sevy himself definitely wants to pitch as soon as possible). “All those things will be considered. How he’s doing, what it looked like, how he’s feeling and then we’ll make that call.”

Newsday | Anthony Rieber: As he tries to shake off a really annoying back injury, Carlos Rodón played catch from about 60 to 75 feet on Saturday and Sunday, according to Yankees manager Aaron Boone. It might not seem like much, but it represented the first time Rodon has picked up a ball and threw it since getting a cortisone injection in his back on Tuesday.

When Rodón was closing in on a return from his left forearm strain a few weeks ago, the back started to bark. He went to several doctors and came up with few answers. The Yankees and the pitcher decided the best course of action was to take the cortisone shot. Now, Boone said the expectation is for Rodón to throw from a further distance on Monday “and we’ll have a better barometer heading into the week where we’re at and how we can progress.”

MLB.com | Betelhem Ashame: The Yankees came this close to tying yesterday’s game against the Rays at 8-8 in the bottom of the ninth. Aaron Judge, who hit two homers on Saturday, came to the plate with two outs in the one-run game against Jason Adam.

Judge hit a long drive at almost 112 mph, which was projected by Statcast to travel 399 feet. It would have been a home run in 19 stadiums, yet Rays center fielder José Siri caught the ball on the warning track to end the game and declare a series split. Fortune went the Yankees’ way on Oswaldo Cabrera’s 1-in-30 ballpark shot earlier in the afternoon, but it struck back here.

“I hit it good, but off the bat, just hit it too high,” Judge said. “Especially with how deep it is out there, [I was] kind of praying for a miracle once it got up there.”

Adam was also praying, but for the opposite to happen. “I thought it was 30 rows deep,” Adam said. “But thankfully, [Judge] missed it more than I thought.”

NY Daily News | Gary Phillips: Clarke Schmidt’s dad was a military man, a former Marine Corps reserve who was deployed to Afghanistan when the Yankees’ righty was in middle school and to Saudi Arabia during his son’s high school days.

Dwight Schmidt was often gone for months, so Renee had to make sure his sons had the chance to enjoy their obsession for sports. That meant driving them to games, being there for them, and even hosting team-related activities. She was a true “baseball mom” for Clarke.

“For her to make those sacrifices, all while working a job and continuing to live her life, it obviously means a lot to me,” Schmidt told The News. “Stuff like that doesn’t go unnoticed to me. She’s made a lot of sacrifices for me.”

Regardless of the results he got on Sunday on Mother’s Day, it’s always nice when professional athletes give props to the ones who sacrificed the most for them: moms.