Inside The Mets

Mets' Clay Holmes flashes ace-caliber 'stuff' versus Astros in spring opener

The New York Mets' experiment of converting Clay Holmes to a starter may have gotten them another ace for the staff

Lindsay Crosby

New York Mets pitcher Clay Holmes (35) pitches during a Spring Training workout at Clover Park.
New York Mets pitcher Clay Holmes (35) pitches during a Spring Training workout at Clover Park. / Sam Navarro-Imagn Images
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Free agent signing Clay Holmes has the pure stuff to provide ace-level production for the New York Mets in 2025.

Holmes, 31, was signed this offseason to be a starter after seven years as one of baseball's best relievers. Spending the last three and a half seasons with the New York Yankees, the two-time All-Star picked up 74 saves on the strength of his sinker, slider, and sweeper trio.

But in his spring training debut yesterday in Port St. Lucie's Clover Park, Holmes flashed two new additions to his arsenal that have the potential to catapult him into the top tier of MLB starters plying their trade across the league.

Read more: Clay Holmes has stellar outing in spring training debut with Mets

Holmes threw six distinct pitches against the Houston Astros, holding them to no hits or walks while striking out three in his three scoreless innings. He threw 34 pitches, 26 of which landed for strikes.

In addition to his three most-used pitches from last season and his existing (but seldom used) four-seam fastball, Holmes debuted a new cutter and his "kick change," which he developed over the offseason with the help of pitching lab Tread Athletics.

While the sample sizes were small, with only three cutters being thrown among his twenty-six pitches, Holmes showed that it is a dangerous threat to left-handed hitters—a historic weakness of the former reliever.

Across his career, lefties have hit 42 points better off of Holmes than righties, although that mark was down to only twenty points last season. The pitch came in at an average of 91 mph yesterday and with more depth than his previous slider he threw to lefties, two movement characteristics that should allow it to be maximally effective in those platoon situations.

The kick-change, as well, also showed surprising depth. Looking similar in movement to his "turbo" sinker but with a 7 mph velocity difference, the kick-change actually didn't move as much as Holmes wanted, per Tread Athletics founder Ben Brewster.

"This was not a particularly depthy day for the kick change," Brewster wrote on X, explaining that the pitch had been "averaging negative vert most of the offseason, as low as -10 VB". In layman's terms, the kick-change was dropping 8 to 11 inches more over the winter than it did on Saturday, hinting that the pitch is not completely dialed in yet.

And that potential improvement should have the rest of the National League East worried. Per pitching analyst Thomas Nestico, the new arsenal models as potentially one of the league's best from a Stuff+ perspective, with every pitch but the changeup registering as at least league-average (100 score) or better.

Additional drop to the changeup will push it from 95 to an above-average score, as well, potentially giving Holmes three elite pitches in the kick change, the sinker, and his sweeper.

It is not just the new pitches that impressed from Holmes on Saturday, however. The four-seam fastball, thrown only 1% of the time in 2024, appears to be significantly different (and better) than it looked last season.

On Saturday, the pitch averaged significantly more induced vertical break, taking it from a below-average mark of six inches IVB to an elite mark of seventeen inches. Coming in at an average of 96.6 mph and with the new shape, it now appears to be a legitimate weapon and yet another compliment to both his new pitches and the existing elite sinker and sweeper combo.

With the Mets facing rotation questions due to the potential workload issues for incumbent ace Kodai Senga, who threw only 5.1 regular season innings last year in the face of shoulder and calf injuries, and the injury to Frankie Montas, having Holmes potentially putting up ace-level performances should give New York the cushion they need to make it through the regular season and still have multiple postseason starters available for October.

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Lindsay Crosby
LINDSAY CROSBY

Lindsay is a contributor for Mets On SI. He is an IBWAA award-winning baseball writer and podcaster living in the Southeast, covering Auburn University baseball since 2021 and the Atlanta Braves since 2022. He can most commonly be found in a baseball press box and you can follow him on Twitter/X at @CrosbyBaseball."

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