For twelve grueling baseball games, the Mets were the kind of team you watch through your fingers. Wednesday night, that was still slightly true, but Clay Holmes pulled the paper bag off fans’ heads.
Holmes went seven strong innings in the Mets’ 3-2 win over the Twins, ending what was the franchise’s longest losing streak since 2002.
The 33-year-old righty allowed two earned runs on five hits, striking out three and walking one.
When the Mets finally needed someone to stop the bleeding, it was the guy who’s quietly been doing exactly that all month. In April, Holmes has allowed just five runs across the entire month. His start to this year has been pretty strong for a pitcher in year two of his starter conversion – he has a 2.10 ERA and a 1.03 WHIP with 19 strikeouts against 10 walks in 30 innings.
The ex-reliever is certainly not piling up strikeouts. He’s not overpowering anyone. However, he keeps putting hitters in uncomfortable spots and letting his sinker do the work.
Remember, through 2024, Holmes was the Yankees’ closer. He had a 31 1/3-inning scoreless streak in 2022, one of the nastiest sinkers in the bullpen ecosystem, a name you absolutely did not want to see warming up in the ninth. The Mets signed him ahead of 2025 and bet that his sinker-sweeper combo would play as a starter if he could build up the innings.
Year one, it worked pretty well. Year two, he’s tied for third in the NL in ERA and co-anchoring a rotation with Nolan McLean that’s been basically the only thing keeping this team from an even uglier run differential.
His sinker has been a little more hittable this year by the numbers. Statcast has a .359 xwOBA against it with only an 9.2% whiff rate. So far, however, he’s been sequencing perfectly. That will be worth monitoring as hitters get second and third looks at him throughout the season.
What has been significantly better at generating chases is his sweeper, which has a 46.4% whiff rate, up over 20 percentage points from 2025.
The Mets are still just 8-16. A thousand other things are still broken, but Clay Holmes is pitching extremely well, and on Wednesday, he did what he’s been doing in each of his starts this season: he put the team in position to win. Take the win, and on to the next.
