On Friday, the New York Mets agreed to a three-year contract with Clay Holmes worth $38 million. It might seem like an odd fit considering the Mets have Edwin Diaz in their bullpen and Holmes spent the past three-plus seasons as the primary closer for the Yankees, registering a 2.69 ERA and a 238/69 K/BB ratio with 74 saves in 217 2/3 innings across 220 appearances. However, the Mets made it clear that they were signing Holmes as a starting pitcher, which has raised some eyebrows since the 31-year-old Holmes has just four career MLB starts.
Many people will likely think of Michael King when wondering if Clay Holmes can transition to the starting rotation since they were both relievers for the Yankees who relied heavily on sinkers and sliders. Given how good King’s first year as a starter was in San Diego, it’s worth digging deep into Clay Holmes’ arsenal to see if he can make a similar impact for the Mets in 2025.
What does Clay Holmes do well?
Gets groundballs and weak contact. Of all qualified relievers in 2024, Clay Holmes recorded the second-highest groundball rate in major league baseball at 65%. His hard contact allowed was 74th among qualified relievers, but 29% hard contact puts him right in line with Josh Hader, Ryan Helsley, and Hunter Gaddis, who are all good relievers.
Holmes also gets an elite amount of called strikes with a 20% called strike rate in each of his last two seasons. That puts him 91st percentile among relievers. Now, he does have trouble locating in the zone, which we’ll get to later, so some of that called strike success is likely because hitters are making him try and throw strikes and are happy to take one to start the count or when they get ahead in the count, so maybe it’s not all sunshine and rainbows there.
How effective will Clay Holmes be as a starting pitcher?
The first thought people are going to have is whether or not Holmes can throw enough innings to be impactful as a starter. He did throw 136.1 innings back in 2016 and has gone over 63 innings in each of the last four seasons as a reliever. Sometimes we foolishly just tack 40-50 innings onto a total and assume that’s what a pitcher will throw the next season, but it’s different with relievers. Holmes was putting plenty of strain on his arm by appearing in over 60 games a season. Throwing six innings at a time and then resting for four or five days can sometimes be less stressful on your arm.
For example, Michael King threw 173.2 innings for the Padres last year when he had never thrown more than 104 in any professional season and had thrown fewer innings in 2021 and 2022 out of the Yankees’ bullpen than Holmes did. Projecting Holmes for 160+ innings (if he’s good enough to stick in the rotation) isn’t that far-fetched.
Next, we can look at the pitch mix, which has the potential to be a true five-pitch arsenal.
Everything starts for Holmes with the sinker, which he throws 56% of the time and will throw to both righties and lefties. The sinker is 96.7 MPH and has a 102 Stuff+ but just a 5.02 PLV grade because PLV takes into account command, and Holmes has just a 46% zone rate and 65% strike rate with his sinker. That’s not ideal for a pitch you’re trying to use to get ahead in the count. That being said, the sinker had a 10.2% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) which was 87th percentile, and gets tons of groundballs. It does sometimes allow hard contact, but most of that is on the ground since he allowed just a 4.2% barrel rate. The movement on the pitch is great, and you love that it can get whiffs, especially low and in on righties, but he needs to fine-tune his command of the pitch if he’s going to make it as a starter.
Despite Stuff+ only suggesting that Holmes throws one slider, he has two distinct ones.
He started relying on a hard slider in 2021 and has continued to use it for both righties and lefties. The pitch is 87.1 MPH, with just 2.5 inches of horizontal movement and 6.2 inches of drop. When you watch it, it almost seems to spin in place and then have the bottom drop out slightly, which might be why it registered an 18.1% SwStr% and just a 31% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR), which is Pitcher List’s hard-hit metric that includes hard groundballs. Holmes does a much better job commanding the slider than he does the sinker, throwing it in the zone almost 49% of the time and posting a 66% strike rate.
To righties, Holmes uses the hard slider 32% of the time in two-strike counts and uses it 43% of the time in two-strike counts against lefties. That makes some sense since he has the sweeper for righties, but the slider also performed way worse in two-strike counts against lefties so that is a bit concerning for his strikeout upside as a starter.
Holmes introduced a sweeper in 2023 and started to use it more in 2024. It is distinct from his harder slider because it averages 84 MPH with nearly 18 inches of horizontal movement and over 10 inches of drop. That means it’s not just moving on a horizontal plane but also has significant drop for a sweeper, which gives it a bit of a hump and a unique shape. It grades out well and misses a ton of bats, but he also throws it in the zone just 38% of the time and was only slightly above-average in terms of overall strike rate. By now, you’re seeing a pattern.
Those are the three main pitches that Holmes used as a reliever, but he has also mixed in both a four-seam fastball and a changeup in previous years. It’s possible that one or both of those pitches could come back into his arsenal as he transitions back to the rotation.
How might the Mets change Clay Holmes?
The Mets have not been huge proponents of four-seam fastballs lately, and Clay Holmes used to throw a cutter back in 2018, so the Mets may add a cutter as his second fastball instead of the four-seam. The Mets pitching development team did a good job of improving Tylor Megill’s cutter, and a similar change would be useful for Holmes, who could use the sinker primarily for righties and the cutter more for lefties. The cutter, which would be about 90 mph, would also theoretically pair with the harder slider that’s 87 mph to create some added deception.
If the Mets also brought back Holmes’ changeup or added some variation of a changeup to his arsenal, that would likely set him up as a sinker, slider, sweeper pitcher to right-handed hitters and a cutter, slider, changeup pitcher to left-handed hitters. That could certainly work, especially if he can locate the sinker and cutter for strikes to get ahead of hitters.
What is the risk?
The risk is that Holmes last started a game in 2018 when he made four starts for the Pirates at the MLB level and 16 in Triple-A. He was pretty good as a Triple-A starting pitcher, posting a 3.40 ERA and a 100/40 K/BB ratio in 95.1 innings in 2018 and a 3.36 ERA and 99/59 K/BB ratio in 112.2 innings in 2017.
However, what you notice is that there are also clear command issues that caused the Pirates to move Holmes to the bullpen in the first place. You can’t post 1.40 WHIPs in Triple-A and be counted on in a major league rotation. Those same command issues popped up at times in 2023 and reared their ugly head in 2024 when Holmes posted a 1.30 WHIP and just a 44% zone rate before getting ousted from the Yankees’ closer gig.
So, to summarize, Holmes’ command has been too shaky to be a starting pitcher, and then was also too shaky to be a closer. Improving his command enough to get a second shot as an MLB starting pitcher will be a big ask.
We have to note that Holmes has a drastically different pitch mix than he did when he was last a starting pitcher. Back then, he threw his sinker only 22% of the time while also throwing a four-seam fastball and a cutter. In 2024, he threw his sinker 56% of the time and he threw it at 69% in 2023. Back when he was a starter, Holmes also used his curveball as a primary secondary pitch and also mixed in a change-up, his primary secondary is now the hard slider and also the sweeper to go with it.
As a result, it’s foolish to use the pitcher he was in 2018 to make assumptions about the pitcher he will be in 2025; however, all versions of Clay Holmes have been a pitcher that has struggled to consistently control the strike zone, and if that continues, the Mets are simply going to move him back into the bullpen where he will serve as a set-up man to Edwin Diaz and lose all fantasy value.
Should fantasy managers be happy about Clay Holmes’ new situation?
My guess is going to be no.
Despite Holmes having command issues, he was a usable fantasy asset as a closer for the Yankees and likely could have been relevant in fantasy leagues had he signed to close for a team like the Nationals, Cubs, or Marlins. Instead, we are now reliant on him making a transition to the starting rotation for him to have any fantasy juice.
Just to put his command profile into perspective, which is admittedly hard when you’re using a reliever’s stats to compare to starting pitchers, Holmes’ 45% zone rate is similar to guys like Kutter Crawford, Nick Pivetta, and Brandon Pfaadt. It’s not terrible company to be in but all those guys have a history of volatility. Additionally, Holmes had just a 61% first-pitch strike rate. That was slightly below average for a reliever which is not great because relievers, in particular closers, are often more cognizant of getting ahead of hitters because they frequently come into the game in close situations and every baserunner is of crucial importance.
If you were to crudely compare Holmes’ first-pitch strike rate to starting pitchers, he would rank 80th among starters who threw at least 120 innings, which puts him around Freddy Peralta, Hunter Brown, Mitch Keller, and Dylan Cease. Again, not a lot of guys who are known for their command.
It is possible that Holmes can make the transition. We discussed earlier that there are modifications he can make to his pitch mix that would give him a deep enough arsenal to make it as a starter. His 13.5% SwStr% would also have ranked 12th among all starting pitchers with at least 120 innings pitched in 2024, so there is enough swing-and-miss in his game with that sinker and two sliders that he could be a fantasy-relevant starting pitcher; however, that assumes he can add control without losing swing-and-miss. That’s a hard bet to make.
My best guess is that the Mets tweak Holmes’ approach with his sinker to allow him to attack the zone with it more successfully. That would likely mean dialing back on some of the movement, which would mean dialing back on some of the swing-and-miss. I think it’s likely that Holmes settles in as a back-end starter for the Mets, but his command issues will lead to lots of short starts with high WHIPs. He will have the occasional strong performance and will rack up a handful of strikeouts every game, but I think he’ll be a volatile starting pitcher who will often be hard to trust in fantasy lineups. There will be fantasy usefulness at times, but it might be hard to pinpoint exactly when you’ll get it.