2025 Mets Pitching Preview: Clay Holmes

One of the more interesting pieces to the New York Mets’ starting rotation is Clay Holmes. Holmes, who has made a name for himself as a dependable reliever, was lights out in his first spring training start with the Mets on Saturday. This season will be the first time since 2018 that Holmes will start a regular season game. Hopefully, this move pays off for him the way it did for former Met Seth Lugo last year in Kansas City.

Holmes had a solid year from the bullpen in 2024, tallying a 3-5 record with a 3.14 ERA. His FIP was an outstanding 3.02. He didn’t walk a lot of batters, keeping his BB/9 down to a 3.14 and he tallied a lot of strikeouts as illustrated by a 9.71 K/9.

Below is a statistical analysis for Holmes’s 2024 season out of the bullpen. 

Holmes’s go-to pitch was his sinker which he threw 56.3% of the time with an average velocity of 96.6 mph. His control of this pitch was impeccable. He earned a 21.6% called strike rate for this pitch, meaning this pitch landed in the strike zone and batters did not swing. Another piece of information to note is the sinker’s effectiveness at inducing ground balls, with an average launch angle of -1.2 degrees. Holmes ground-ball rate, overall, was in the league’s 100th percentile last year. This pitch was almost automatic in keeping the ball on the ground. Look for Holmes to rely heavily on his sinker when in a jam with runners on this season.  

Holmes’s off-speed pitches were effective as well. He almost split the amount of times he used his tight slider compared to his sweeper. The tight slider was a very effective pitch. It resulted in a 17.8% swing-and-miss rate, as well as a 20.8% called strike rate. This means that Holmes had great control of this pitch by placing it in the zone as well as fooling batters by making them chase this pitch and not allowing batters to make contact. His sweeper had the highest spin rate as well as the best average exit velocity against, meaning that batters were not making great contact against this pitch.  

The most obvious question mark regarding Holmes is, “Will he be able to handle the volume of innings pitched by a starter? ” It’s been seven years since his last start, and as he nears age-32, will his body allow him to take this role? Looking optimistically, there have been many relievers that have made the transition to starter, as mentioned earlier Seth Lugo, John Smoltz, Adam Wainwright, and Johan Santana, to name a few.  This is a low-floor, high-ceiling situation.

President of baseball operations, David Stearns, has been known for pulling the right strings to get the most out of pitchers, and it will be interesting to see how this Holmes move will pan out at the back end of this rotation for the 2025 season. It was a great first step on Saturday as Holmes went three perfect innings with three strikeouts.

The post 2025 Mets Pitching Preview: Clay Holmes appeared first on Metsmerized Online.