Clay Holmes

Clay Holmes went from a Pirates reclamation project with a 4.93 ERA to a two-time All-Star closer for the New York Yankees, saved 74 games in four seasons in the Bronx, then somehow turned around and became a full-time starting pitcher for the crosstown Mets at age 31. That's not a normal career arc. That's a guy who kept getting told what he couldn't do and kept doing it anyway.

Path to the Bronx

Holmes grew up in Dothan, Alabama, went to high school in nearby Slocomb, and the Pirates took him in the ninth round of the 2011 draft (ninth round -- not exactly a bonus-baby, blue-chip situation). He debuted with Pittsburgh in 2018 and spent parts of four seasons there mostly frustrating everybody, himself included. The stuff was always loud -- a heavy, mid-90s sinker that made scouts drool -- but the results didn't match until the walks disappeared.

Pittsburgh finally gave up on the project on July 26, 2021, shipping Holmes to New York for two infield prospects, Hoy Park and Diego Castillo. He arrived with a 4.93 ERA. Twenty-five games later, as a Yankee, he'd posted a 1.61 ERA and a 0.79 WHIP down the stretch. Same pitcher, same sinker, completely different guy (funny how that works when a pitching staff actually fixes your mechanics instead of just hoping you figure it out).

Yankees Career

Holmes didn't walk into the closer's role -- he backed into it. Aroldis Chapman went down with Achilles tendinitis on May 24, 2022, and Holmes just took the ball and never really gave it back that year. He was ridiculous in the interim: a 31.1-inning scoreless streak from early April into late June, the longest in the American League that season, built almost entirely on one pitch. His sinker sat 97 mph and ran back over the plate like it had a grudge -- a freakin' nasty pitch, thrown nearly 80% of the time -- and it generated a career-high 75.8% groundball rate. Hitters weren't missing it so much as pounding it into the dirt over and over. He made his first All-Star team that July.

2022 wasn't all triumph, though. In the decisive Game 3 of that year's ALDS against Cleveland, with the bases loaded and the game hanging in the balance, Aaron Boone went to Clarke Schmidt instead of his closer. Schmidt allowed a two-run single. The Yankees lost, and lost the series two games later. Holmes said afterward he was surprised he never got the call. Nobody's ever fully explained that decision, and it's still one of the more debated bullpen moves of the Boone era.

He settled into a steady groove after that -- 24 saves in 2023, a 2.86 ERA, the kind of quietly reliable ninth-inning presence that doesn't generate headlines until it stops working. Then 2024 happened, and it stopped working in the loudest way possible.

Key Moments

From Blown Saves to Opening Day Starter

Here's the part of the file that's genuinely hard to hold in your head at once. In 2024, Holmes made his second All-Star team and set a career high with 30 saves. He also blew 13 of them -- the most in the majors that year, tying Dave Righetti's Yankees franchise record set back in 1987 -- and lost the job in September on a walk-off grand slam, which is about as public a firing as a closer can get. Then, almost immediately, he turned around and threw 12 scoreless innings across 13 postseason appearances, winning ALDS Game 1 over Kansas City and ALCS Game 2 over Cleveland as the Yankees rode all the way to the World Series (they lost to the Dodgers, but that's a different file). Same guy. Same month, basically. Both versions were real.

The Yankees let him walk that winter. The Mets didn't just sign him -- they handed him a rotation spot, and in March 2025 named him their Opening Day starter, a genuinely surprising call for a reliever who hadn't started a big-league game since his 2018 rookie season with Pittsburgh. It worked. Holmes finished 2025 with a 12-8 record, a 3.53 ERA, and career highs in innings (165.2) and strikeouts (129) as a full-time Mets starter. He didn't allow a home run in his first seven starts, tying a Mets franchise mark. Whatever the Yankees thought they had in the bullpen, it turned out there was a starter hiding in there the whole time.

Holmes is currently on the Mets' injured list, targeting a return around the August 3, 2026 trade deadline, and there's talk of extension conversations between him and the club. None of that changes what he was in pinstripes: a reclamation project who turned into a two-time All-Star, closed out 74 games, and left a hole in the ninth inning that took the Yankees a while to fill.

The Yankees traded two infield prospects for a broken-down sinkerballer and got four years of closing duty and two All-Star appearances out of the deal. The Mets took a shot on a reliever with a career-worst walk-off grand slam as his going-away present and turned him into an Opening Day starter. Both bets paid off. Holmes just cashed them in different uniforms.