All-Star Ace Dallas Keuchel Can Replace Luis Severino and Save Yankees' Season

The New York Yankees already know the danger of trying to win a championship with a subpar starting rotation. 

Think back to October, when the Yankees lost the American League Division Series to the Boston Red Sox three games to one. In those three losses, the Yankee starters combined to pitch only eight innings while allowing 14 runs.

What they had clearly wasn't good enough.

It still isn't, not with the news that Luis Severino could be out for the next three months with a Grade 2 lat strain.

Since October, the Yankees have added left-hander James Paxton, who has a 6.00 ERA in his first three Yankee starts. Now they subtract Severino, their best starter, likely until July (if not later).

Severino began the season on the injured list with a inflamed right rotator cuff. The Yankees said the two injuries aren't related, but does that bode well for a pitcher who now has two injuries and zero innings pitched on his 2019 log?

For now, the Yankees could replace Severino, who may win a Cy Young Award at some point in his career, with a pitcher who already owns a Cy Young. They just need to take the leap and sign free-agent left-hander Dallas Keuchel.

All winter, the Yankees have given no indication that they're willing to pay what Keuchel wants. On Wednesday, Yankees decision-makers were telling friends that a Keuchel signing remains unlikely. But as long as Keuchel remains a free agent and the Yankees remain in need, there's time for them to reconsider.

They should.

Even if Keuchel's salary forces the Yankees to pay more in luxury tax, it could also push them closer to winning. Keuchel is 31 and may never again be as good as he was in his Cy Young 2015 season, but he had a 3.23 ERA in 20 starts from June 16 to the end of the 2018 season.

Michael Zagaris/Getty Images

Normally, a pitcher like that wouldn't be available to a team that lost a key starter in April. Normally, all of the best free agents would have signed by now, and no team would trade a top starter this early in the season.

Keuchel missed all of spring training and likely wouldn't be ready to start right away, even if he is throwing regular 95-pitch simulated games, as Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reported Saturday. But the Yankees would be in position to wait for his debut. They have CC Sabathia coming off the injured list this weekend, and they've been getting strong starts from Masahiro Tanaka (1.47 ERA) and Domingo German (1.64).

It also doesn't hurt that their early schedule is soft (they have April series remaining against the Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants) or that the rival Red Sox are off to a 3-9 start. But the schedule will eventually get tougher, and the Red Sox should eventually start winning.

And it's hard to count on the 26-year-old German, who has made only 16 career major league starts, or the 38-year-old Sabathia, who is past the point where he can pitch like an ace.

As long as Severino was only going to miss the first few weeks of the season, the Yankees could hold out hope that he would return and immediately dominate opponents. But even in the best-case scenario, he now won't throw a baseball for the next six weeks.

Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

Other teams could use Keuchel, too. The Philadelphia Phillies may have a lineup that can win, but their starting pitcher from the second game of the season, right-hander Nick Pivetta, now has a 9.45 ERA after giving up seven runs to the Washington Nationals in 3.2 innings Wednesday night. The Red Sox rotation has a worst-in-baseball 8.78 ERA through 12 games.

Yankee starters had a 3.07 combined ERA before Paxton gave up five runs in four-plus innings against the Houston Astros on Wednesday. But that's after nine games against the Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers, two teams that began the season with no plan to play in October.

The Yankees played last October, but they were done when their starters couldn't stop the Red Sox. Severino was one of the culprits, giving up the first six runs in a 16-1 Game 3 loss.

Meanwhile, Keuchel has made nine career postseason starts without ever giving up as many as six runs or getting as few as nine outs, as Severino did that night.

Keuchel is still a top-level pitcher, and Rosenthal suggested he might be willing to sign a one-year contract for the right price. Unless the Yankees want to risk another season with a subpar rotation, they might want to consider paying that price.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.