The state of the New York Mets’ rotation is such that one of their most important starters, especially now that they are down two starters just one week into camp, has not started a game in seven years. But if Clay Holmes is going to defy the odds and throw almost 100 more innings than he ever has in the big leagues, he will rely heavily on data to guide him there.
In addition to adding two pitches and ramping up his throwing schedule entering camp, Holmes travels to the back fields of the Mets’ camp with a device that tracks every throw he makes, including when he plays catch. The personal device is in addition to the usual Trackman data he gets from his bullpen sessions and game appearances.
“The way I’ve been doing it is—and it’s not totally comprehensive, but it gets the job done—is just using a radar gun and a basic video that tracks my number of throws and the velo I throw when I’m not on the mound,” Holmes says. “So, we’re just using the number of throws and velo just to kind of see how much I’m throwing in between starts, just to make sure that that’s in a good place.”
Holmes has thrown between 63 and 70 innings in each of the past four years with a 3.05 ERA and 74 saves. The Mets need him to throw at least 150 innings, especially because the depth of their rotation is already taxed with non-throwing injuries to Frankie Montas and Sean Manaea.
“So, what I’ve noticed, as a reliever, things are pretty even,” Holmes says of the regimen. “There’s not a ton of hills. And I’m kind of used to doing the same throwing program almost every day. Now, as I’m starting, I’ve got to start having some lower days versus what I’m used to. So [the data] is really just saying, ‘Hey, you know, these days you need to make sure you back off.’
“And it’s just feedback to make sure I’m doing it right. It’s just a way to kind of say, ‘Okay, if I’m feeling good, I’m doing this.’ I know what I was doing to kind of keep things at a good level. If you’re feeling bad, it’s like you have something to go look back versus just wondering what you did or what happened. So, it’s both. You’re just using that and kind of how you feel to paint a picture of what’s right for you.”
Holmes, who turns 32 next month, is following the mid-career bullpen-to-rotation paths traveled in the past two years by righthanders Seth Lugo, Michael King and Jordan Hicks, all of whom, like Holmes, also had long ago experience starting. Lugo made the switch in 2023 at age 33, adding 81 1/3 innings. King converted in the final two months of the 2023 season and last year at age 29 added 81 innings, including the postseason. Hicks added 44 innings last year at age 27.
The early returns for Holmes have been spectacular, just like his stuff. He is a six-pitch pitcher who looks especially sharp, in part because he came to camp already conditioned to throw three innings. The additions of a changeup and cutter have been remarkably seamless. He has quickly gained so much confidence in his changeup that he is throwing it to righthanded hitters, not just lefties.
“Yeah, I’ve been messing around with that,” he says. “It’s one of those things where, man, if I had to go pitch six innings right now and get hitters out, I probably would lean on that quite a bit.”
The changeup has so much movement that manager Carlos Mendoza at first thought it was a slider. Its metrics, especially with arm-side run, resemble the changeups of teammate David Peterson and Toronto Blue Jays righthander José Berríos.
“It’s got great, great metrics to it,” says teammate Brandon Nimmo, who faced Holmes in a live batting practice session. “It kind of acted like a splitter. It’s great. I’m really excited for him because he’s been working on a few different pitches in his arsenal. He’s even got the cutter now.”
The changeup and cutter are especially important for Holmes to keep lefthanded hitters off his sinker. They hit .351 off his sinker last season.
“I throw the gyro slider, and the cutter is just trying to create a little more below it basically, which is hard for me to do to keep things up,” Holmes says about having an elevated pitch on a lefty’s hands. “But they showed me a new grip and a few things and it’s pretty good actually. I’m kind of surprised.
“It’s the one I was trying to throw up. And it was like, 91, 92 [mph]. It was staying on the zero line. So, like if my sinker’s going 18 inches, you know, it was staying on the zero line, which would be pretty effective for lefties. So, it could be something there.”
Holmes’s sinker has elite downward movement, with five inches more sink than comparable sinkers at his velocity (96.6 mph). Its horizontal movement is average, or “on the zero line” on a graph of movement. The cutter represents an inverse in movement: more horizontal than downward.
“That’s something Blake Treinen has done,” Nimmo says. “Treinen obviously had the amazing sinker his whole career. But then against some lefties that sinker kind of plays into their bat path. So, he developed a cutter. And it’s not like it’s spectacular. But it’s just enough to get off your barrel.
“And he has that sweeper, as well. They play really well together. And so their stuff is really, really similar where he has that huge power sinker and a great sweeper. So, for him, just adding that little cutter and then a changeup off of that puts that in the back of your mind as a hitter. ‘Okay. Well, I can’t just get the head out here because then I’ll just swing and miss on the changeup.’ It’s a great weapon to have. So, I think they really thought things through well and he’s got a good plan going into spring.”
Holmes blew 13 saves for the Yankees last season before they pulled him from that role. Even with an elite sinker, it’s hard to navigate the endgame with a pitch designed to get weak contact, if only because it leaves you vulnerable to the vagaries of groundballs and the defense behind you.
Last season, Holmes was one of only 18 pitchers who threw a sinker more than half the time (min. 500 sinkers). It moved so much it generated an average launch angle of –4 degrees, the seventh-lowest among all pitchers with at least 100 sinkers put in play. But batters still hit .319 against the pitch, including .365 on balls in play. The expected batting average on Holmes’s sinker was .286, a 33-point gap from the actual result.
Holmes now has more ways in more quadrants to get hitters out. He used his sinker in his first start just 35% of the time, down from 56% last year, though the small sample size indicates a willingness to work more on his new pitches early in spring training. His velocity across his four established pitches was down between one and two miles per hour, though that is expected for someone pitching five innings at a time rather than one.
Ironically, his six-pitch arsenal built on mid-90s fastballs now most resembles the guy he is replacing in the Mets’ rotation: Luis Severino. Under pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, Severino relied more on his sinker and sweeper last year, boosting their use from 5% to 42%. He logged 198 2/3 innings, postseason included, his most since 2017. At age 30, Severino threw 109 1/3 more innings than he did in his injury-shortened previous season with the Yankees. The Mets and Holmes would be thrilled with a similar growth in workload.
“It’s been great here,” Holmes says. “It’s pretty loose, and I think they’ve done a great job of creating that atmosphere. You can tell that they’ve been very intentional about creating that over the last few years. You’ve heard it on the outside, but being here, you definitely feel it.
“And, you know, there are a lot of great people. The pitching department is great. The communication’s been outstanding. It’s been everything that it’s been cracked out to be so far. So, I’ve been happy.”
