How Yanks’ Clay Holmes became one of MLB’s most dominant pitchers

There’s an old video of Clay Holmes that pops up first when you Google him and his sinker, his long hair and beard quickly indicating this was filmed when he was still a Pirate. He talks for about a minute, showing where his middle finger juts up against the seam in his grip and how changing the positioning of his index finger affects movement.

It’s short, sweet and simplified, but also based on 400 years of scientific developments that date back to Isaac Newton being conked on the head with an apple.

But that’s the type of juxtaposition you get when you consider Holmes who, just a year ago, was a forgettable reliever with plenty of potential and is now one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball. He throws two pitches, a sinker and a slider, and relies on the sinker 80% of the time; and even though everyone knows what’s coming, no one can really hit it the way they want.

Along the way, he’s become the most valuable arm in the Yankees bullpen. It’s a position that’s mostly due to his dominance but also due to necessity: three of their relievers hit the injured list in the span of a week – Chad Green, Aroldis Chapman and Jonathan Loaisiga. He was already outperforming Chapman when the closer went on the IL with an Achilles injury – something that makes his natural ascension to the position that much easier. He earned his fifth save of the season Wednesday in a 2-0 win over the Orioles.  

“That’s one of the nastiest pitches in baseball,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said of Holmes’ sinker, and the numbers support him. According to Baseball Savant, Holmes has the best sinker in the game, with a run value of -9, tied for second best overall pitch in baseball (three pitchers are tied for first). It averages in at 96.4 mph – almost four mph less than Chapman’s – but it has 16.5 inches of run along with 24 inches of drop and has helped him to a groundball rate of over 80%. After Tuesday, he hadn’t allowed an earned run in his last 21 appearances and his 23-inning scoreless streak is the longest in the majors. He has an 0.38 ERA, and a projected ERA this season of 1.19, which would put him in the league’s top one percentile. He’s thrown 25 pitches in his last two outings, and all but two have been strikes. He’s walked two batters all year.

“I think he’s in a really good place,” Boone said. “He’s got a ton of confidence – understandably so with the sinker-slider combination, but [also] the ability to know what he wants to execute, have the conviction of that plan and then the stuff to back it up. You’re seeing a really complete and polished …”

Boone paused, looking for the word.

“Stud.”

A GOOD GRIP ON DATA 

That’s easy enough to understand, but the real question is how did it all happen, and so quickly?

The thing is, in order to understand how the early 2021 version of Clay Holmes – the one who pitched to a 4.93 ERA in 44 games with the Pirates – turned into the Yankee version of Clay Holmes, you have to look at the man himself.

“For a guy that throws 80 percent of the same pitch, it’s kind of crazy to think he’s probably our most analytically inclined pitcher just in terms of understanding spin and seam orientation and where his hand is to create the effects that he wants,” pitching coach Matt Blake said. “I think he’s really inquisitive and he processes information really well.”

For one, Holmes has been an eager adopter of fresh data, including the analysis of seam-shifted wake, a newly theorized phenomenon that looks to quantify how the orientation of baseball seams through air affects movement. Movement through spin is nothing new, and neither is movement through grip, but certain shifts in grip – like using the seams so that air interacts with the ball asymmetrically – can cause unexpected movement to the batter’s eye.

Holmes utilized it with his sinker, a process he began when he was with the Pirates, as indicated with that old video. Now he’s done it with a slider, this time gripping it so it has less gyrational spin and a greater sweeping motion. The Yankees call it a whirly or a two-seam slider. He used to hold it more like a curveball, he explained, but by changing the way he holds the seams, he created pitch action that would otherwise require a change in arm slot. He’s mostly scrapped his curveball entirely.

“Because of the grip and the way the seams are orientated, it just gets more horizontal movement,” Holmes said. “So not too much change in delivery but more change in grip and trusting the way it’s coming off my hand.”

The increase in horizontal movement is stark – 11.4 inches this year from 2.5 inches last year – and the whiff rate rose from 37.8% last year to 47.4% this year. He still throws the other slider, too, he said.

A CONFIDENCE GAME, TOO

But though data is all well and good, there is another, more human element to Holmes’ change.

“Last year, when we got him over here and showed him how good his stuff is and how much room for error he has, it started this manifestation form of, OK, I’m going to throw the ball over the plate – oh, strike one. I’m going to throw it again – oh, strike two,” Blake said. “Then he started throwing harder and more consistently and it kind of kept building on itself.”

And because of that, Holmes has managed to combine dominance with repetition. Having all the data helps him recreate success. It also allows him to pound the strike zone more and let it rip – thus the immaculate command with ticked up velocity.

“Definitely,” Holmes said when asked if the science gives him more confidence. “It kind of helped me to accomplish this – just because you know the numbers, the averages, how certain pitches play that other people throw and you know where you line up, so it gives some sense of comfort that if you can create a pitch with this movement profile, you can trust it and that’s kinda helped a little bit with the sinker.”

All the numbers are cool, he said, but he isn’t going out there thinking of Newton’s third law, or worrying about airflow. He’s simply pitching.

“I kind of like the number stuff but I think for me knowing why my sinker is good and knowing which one is my best one and why has helped by consistency and just being able to repeat it,” he said. “That’s something I dove into just in the sake of knowing myself and knowing the pitch better, which I think is helping.”

Holmes embraces analytics “maybe a step further than most guys do,” Blake said. But what makes him special is his ability to metabolize the information without overthinking when it’s time to perform.

“I think it’s a testament to him, not letting it muddy his game skills, of being aggressive in the zone, of attacking hitters,” Blake said.” A lot of times, guys will probably be on one side or the other end – really good game skills and they don’t worry about that stuff or they’re analytically inclined and they focus on that and then maybe aren’t as focused on the game portion of it. I think when he gets out there, he trusts the work he’s done to prepare himself and it puts him in a position to execute pitches.”

Execution to evolution – it’s a shift the Yankees are happy to benefit from.