Clay Holmes entered the season as the Yankees’ undisputed closer, earning the job in 2022 after Aroldis Chapman hit a nasty slide and not looking back. The Pirates dealt him to New York in a deal that will go down as one of Brian Cashman’s best, but things aren’t looking so good for the impending free agent. Holmes has a league-worst 10 blown saves and also sports a horrible -1.04 Win Probability Added, and to some, that’s more than enough reason to remove the sinkerballer from the closer role.
To others, Clay Holmes is a misunderstood pitcher who has run into poor luck and shouldn’t be blamed for every lead that’s faded away with him on the mound. All of these opinions stem from one very controversial question; do the Yankees need a new closer?
Can the Yankees Rely on Clay Holmes Right Now?
As mentioned already, Clay Holmes is having a very good season when you look at his ERA and other underlying numbers. People get on the right-hander for not missing enough bats, but he has a 26% strikeout rate, higher than some of the best closers in the game like Emmanuel Clase. Some pitchers can miss bats but fail to limit free passes, but that also wouldn’t be the case for Holmes, who sports a 6.5% walk rate, which ranks in the 71st Percentile at preventing walks.
How about his quality of contact? With a 1.30 WHIP, the right-hander does allow an uncomfortably high amount of baserunners, and it burned him on Sunday against the Tigers when he allowed two hits in one inning. His lower walk rate could be an indication that when he misses, it’s in-zone instead of out-of-zone, but that’s not really the case either as batters have a .318 xwOBACON and .309 xSLG% against him, not doing much damage on contact.
So then, is it luck? Well, it’s pretty hard to argue otherwise right now. He’s allowed a .316 BA on groundballs which is incredible given how soft they’re hit (85.9 MPH), and we’ve seen the defense betray him multiple times. Whether it’s Alex Verdugo not making a catch in left field that had an incredibly high catch probability or Anthony Volpe making a throwing error, Holmes has blown saves on the back of some horrible luck at various points of the season.
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The discrepancy in BABIP is realistically a lucky thing, but again it’s hard to pin his struggles on a lack of strikeouts given how well some other closers have pitched with lower strikeout rates than Holmes. I believe the issue with the Yankees’ closer is that his sinker isn’t the reliable pitch that it’s been ever since he donned the pinstripes. There is some element of luck involved with his sinker’s regression, but it’s also become a worse pitch than last season.
His sinker is dropping less and running less, resulting in the massive 18-point drop in Stuff+, the lowest mark he’s ever posted on that pitch since the metric started being tracked in 2020. It’s a concerning regression considering that it’s a pitch he’s used as often as 80% of the time in some seasons, and while both of his sliders are dominant pitches, Clay Holmes cannot use that sinker the way he’s used it before.
This is something that Holmes himself has either been aware of or has been made aware of, as he’s thrown nearly 70% sliders over his last nine outings. He’s striking out 34.2% of batters over that stretch with a 76.2% groundball rate, but he’s blown three saves over that stretch. When you break down those three saves, one was due to a barrage of soft groundballs, as Holmes surrendered a game-tying run against the Phillies without a single ball getting out of the infield.
Against the Blue Jays, he came into the game with bases loaded and one out, allowing a sacrifice fly before closing the inning out. The only save I really hold against him is that one against Detroit, where two poorly spotted sinkers resulted in a double and game-tying single. When a pitcher is striking out more batters and giving up harmless contact most of the time, I would call that progress, but the results haven’t exactly reflected that improvement yet.
When a pitcher has an excellent process on the mound but middling results, something has to eventually give, and I think we’re looking at someone who could be on the cusp of going on a tear.
Why Clay Holmes Could Turn the Corner Soon
If we’re being honest, there’s no way you’ll breathe easy when Clay Holmes is on the mound in the ninth inning of an important game. You don’t win games based on what should have happened, but as we enter the final weeks of the regular season, the importance of Clay Holmes cannot be understated. The adjustment to throw more sliders than sinkers is one that has improved the swing-and-miss without removing groundballs from his game, and if he can keep that up I expect him to convert more saves and bail the Yankees out in tight ballgames.
We’re talking about a pitcher who doesn’t allow damage contact often, strikes out hitters at a higher clip than the average reliever, and has elite-level stuff. Sometimes baseball is just a cruel and unforgiving sport, we’ve seen even the greatest players succumb to the cruelties of rotten luck. Whether it’s Mariano Rivera blowing the 2001 World Series without allowing much solid contact or Emmanuel Clase somehow leading all of baseball in blown saves last season, luck will always tip the scale one way or another during the biggest moments of a game.
Clay Holmes isn’t the pitcher that Mariano Rivera is, nobody ever will be, but that doesn’t mean that he’s an incapable closer. When looking into this article, it was easy to just write this entire question off as a joke. The guy has blown more saves than any other pitcher in baseball and has a negative WPA, I shouldn’t even be entertaining an argument that suggests he should keep his job.
Until I see Clay Holmes struggle to miss bats or limit damage contact, there’s no reason for me to look at him as someone who cannot get the final three outs of a game. Maybe there’s a mental component to this that I’m unaware of, but it would be irresponsible for me to imply or suggest that there’s an off-field concern considering that I’m not in the dugout and there’s no data to suggest that his stuff or command worsen in the ninth.
He’s one of just five relievers to sport both a K% above 25% and a GB% above 50%, a combination that I want in high leverage. Home runs are the worst-case scenario, and having a reliever who suppresses home runs and damage contact is a luxury. If anything, Clay Holmes is perfect for these kinds of situations, but if he wants history to remember him as a beloved closer on the Yankees, finding a way to get things going down the stretch and nailing saves in October is just what the doctor would order.