TAMPA — Luis Severino’s mother wanted to know if her son won an arbitration hearing Friday.
“She called me and said, ‘What happened? You won?’ ” Severino recalled of his mother, Matilde, calling from the Dominican Republic. “I said, ‘No, but I got $40 million,’ and she said, ‘That’s more than $5 million.’’
With Severino’s agents and the Yankees not hungry for the prickly process of an arbitration hearing, they agreed on a four-year contract before walking into a hearing scheduled for Friday in St. Petersburg, Fla. The deal guarantees the soon-to-be 25-year-old $40 million and can max out at $52.