Manager Aaron Boone said the Yankees plan to “get creative” with the closer's role, but that Clay Holmes will now be “part of it.” The announcement came a day after Holmes failed to earn his MLB-high 11th save of the season in 40 attempts, tying him for two more than any other pitcher.
It also happened on a day when simply typing Holmes' name into X's search engine automatically expands the search to “Clay Holmes terrorist,” meaning the final two innings of a baseball game are truly testing times for the Yankees.
(And Mets fans will read those last 18 words and nod sadly in quiet sympathy with some understanding. That's what it's like to watch baseball in New York in 2024. The fun doesn't begin until “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is over.)
Those pleading for the Yankees to not just demote Holmes but send him to the instructional leagues will get something out of the way, even if it's not exactly what they were looking for. But it's also the best of many bad options. And even with this approach, hoping they'll magically find a good pitcher who will take the fear out of the ninth inning is not a reliable plan.
Remember how badly Edwin Diaz pitched earlier this year? He missed four saves in eight games in May. When the Mets rested Diaz, his replacements, Adam Ottavino and Jake Diekman, missed two saves in the next seven games. Then when Diaz was suspended for using a sticky substance, the team missed three more saves.
Every now and then, it helps to remember that without the brilliance of the great Mariano Rivera, the Yankees may not have won any of the five championships they won from 1996 to 2009. Rivera essentially redefined the setup man hit by hitting in 27 of the title-deciding games in 1996, and again from 1998-2000 and 2009.
But let's not forget that the Yankees might have won three more titles without the great Rivera's missteps: Sandy Alomar Jr. thwarted Rivera in Cleveland in 1997, Luis Gonzalez (and others) thwarted him in Phoenix in 2001, and Dave Roberts' Red Sox players ruined the party in Boston in 2004.
Even the greatest players of all time are human. Even Tom Hanks made “Joe Versus the Volcano.” Even the Beatles recorded “Why Don't We Do It in the Road.” Even Mariano Rivera wasn't always perfect. This is hard work. Every time you step on the field, the outcome of the game is in your hands. It's never as easy as being a closer and hitting a grounder in the top of the first inning with the score at 6-3.
“If you put me in that situation 1,000 more times, I'd give the ball to Mo every single time,” Joe Torre said in 2004.
“All you can do is believe that a good player is going to be a good player, but sometimes that's just not realistic,” Terry Collins said in 2016 about Jeurys Familia, who saved 94 games in 2015 and 2016 but had both seasons marred by home runs in October by Kansas City's Alex Gordon and San Francisco's Connor Gillaspie.
A reliable closer can energize a team when it's in its most critical situations, and sometimes the closer can be the thing that ends a season.
Almost all relief pitchers, even the best ones, are, I repeat, maddeningly volatile. That's the mystery of the job. Sometimes you can't hit, and sometimes you can't pitch. Sometimes you can have both in the same season.
Well, sometimes it's the same week.
Still, offseason acquisitions of sluggers and starting pitchers still make headlines. Bullpens are built quietly, with quiet desperation. Sometimes it works. After all, Holmes became a good closer when the Yankees stopped waiting for Aroldis Chapman's radar-gun-shattering velocity to translate into reliability in key moments.
Of course, even in Chapman's most shaky season in 2019, he had an 88.1% save percentage. Holmes and Diaz are both around 73%, a stretch for an ambitious team. Of the nine players in the top 10 in saves this year excluding Holmes, the next worst is Diaz's brother, Alexis, who only made 86% for a weak Reds team.
Here's why Boone's decision makes perfect sense: The pitcher who seems best suited to replace Holmes, more than anyone else, is the pitcher who emerged from the motor pool…Holmes. Edwin Diaz has also struggled this year, but he's shown flashes of his former self. And Holmes is the same pitcher who, coming into his 21st appearance on May 20, had pitched 20 innings and faced 81 batters, saving 13 of 13 save opportunities with a 0.00 Brutusky ERA. It doesn't get much better than that.
That day against the Mariners, he handed over a 4-1 lead into the ninth inning before giving up four runs, failing to save and taking the loss. He's struggled since then. Still, the Yankees were just half a game out of first place in the AL East entering Wednesday, and the Mets were half a game out of a wild card spot.
I don't know where we stand as a baseball town with two excellent bullpens — no, actually, two mediocre bullpens.
