Alexander Wilson
The New York Mets already had an injury problem. Losing Clay Holmes turns it into something much uglier.
Holmes fractured his right fibula Friday when Spencer Jones smoked a 111.1 mph comebacker off his leg. He somehow stayed in the game for a bit after that, which is wild in hindsight, but the diagnosis landed exactly where the Mets feared it might.
Manager Carlos Mendoza said Holmes would be down “a long time,” and that is the kind of update that hits harder when the injured pitcher has been one of the few reliable pieces holding the rotation together.
Holmes was stabilizing the Mets
Holmes has not just been decent. He has been one of the Mets’ actual bright spots, posting a 2.39 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, and 45 strikeouts over 52.2 innings. For a team that has spent too much of the season wobbling, that production mattered.
MLB.com called the injury a nightmare scenario for a team already decimated by injuries, and that is not dramatic. It is accurate. Holmes was giving them bulk, ground balls, and enough stability to keep the rotation from completely fraying.
Now he is on the 15-day injured list, and the actual absence will obviously be much longer than that.
The timeline is still brutal
The better news is that the Mets are hopeful Holmes can return late in the season, and CBS Sports reported he is expected to be shut down from all activity for six-to-eight weeks before beginning a rehab program. That keeps the door open, but it does not solve the immediate problem.
Starting pitchers do not just stop for nearly two months and then jump back into a rotation. Holmes will need a spring-training-style buildup once he is cleared, and that likely pushes any realistic return deeper into the summer at the earliest.
The structural problem is bigger than one missing start. The Mets are replacing one of the only arms who had been giving them a dependable turn every fifth day.
The injuries keep piling up
The broader injury picture makes this worse. The Mets have already been dealing with issues involving Francisco Lindor, Francisco Alvarez, Luis Robert Jr., Jorge Polanco, Kodai Senga, Ronny Mauricio, and Jared Young. Some of those injuries hit the lineup, some hit depth, and some hit the rotation, but the total effect is the same. The roster keeps losing pieces faster than it can normalize.
Losing Holmes stings beyond the ERA because he was one of the few things the Mets could point to and say, plain and simple, that part works.
Now they have to patch another hole, and the margin for error is basically gone. Senga’s availability becomes even more important. The back-end arms have to cover innings they probably should not be asked to cover. The offense has to do more, which has not exactly been a safe bet.
Holmes may still pitch again this season, and that matters. But if the Mets are going to stay afloat long enough for that to mean anything, they need answers quickly.
Because right now, losing Holmes does not feel like another injury note. It feels like the kind of blow that exposes just how fragile this Mets season already was.
More about:New York Mets
