It's a shocker for Yankees, but nobody's perfect — not even Clay Holmes
Yankees relief pitcher Clay Holmes hands the ball to manager Aaron Boone during the ninth inning against the Reds in an MLB game at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
A 3-0 lead with Clay Holmes on the mound?
Few things came with a bigger guarantee this season. And from a Yankees’ perspective, handing the game over to Holmes, in that scenario, was the equivalent of trusting your dog to hustle back with the tennis ball.
The result is predictable, nearly fool-proof. Utterly reliable.
Until it isn’t.
On Tuesday night, Holmes reminded us there is no such thing as 100% certainty in this world, even for the almost infallible Yankees. For eight innings, the lowly Reds were practically another spectator in the Bronx, dutifully going through the motions as Gerrit Cole piled up 11 strikeouts and Anthony Rizzo’s two-run single seemed to be plenty.
The 3-0 lead felt like 10-0. And with Holmes’ entrance, the "W" was penciled in.
But the Yankees’ closer, new to the role this season, did a spot-on impersonation of the guy he replaced, Aroldis Chapman, on his worst day. Holmes was powerless. Zero command, and betrayed by his most potent weapon, his bowling-ball sinker.
Wild doesn’t begin to describe what went down in the eventual 4-3 loss. A leadoff walk to Tommy Pham, Joey Votto’s solid single to centerfield, then drilling Tyler Stephenson squarely in the back to load the bases. Holmes never appeared comfortable, and the game slipped away from there. Isiah Kiner-Falefa couldn’t knock down Tyler Naquin’s sharp grounder -- it deflected off his glove on a diving attempt for the first run -- and Holmes’ final pitch, a 97-mph sinker, clipped Kyle Farmer to make it 3-2.
“It can’t happen,” said Holmes, who had hit a total of nine batters going back to 2021, out of 445 batters faced. “Just a lot of non-competitive pitches there.”
Holmes had surrendered only two earned runs this whole season, over 38 appearances, entering Tuesday night’s game with a 0.46 ERA. Two days earlier, sitting on a Fenway couch, Holmes was told by Aaron Boone that he was an All-Star. And this was the Reds. To say what happened was shocking is an understatement. Truthfully, the possibility of such a meltdown probably never entered the Yankees’ minds.
Why would it? They were 49-0 when leading after eight innings, boasting an airtight bullpen anchored by one of the game’s most unhittable closers in Holmes. But maybe the lesson here is that Holmes, for all his dominance, is still on the learning curve when it comes to closing games. All-Star or not, he’s relatively new at this, and finding a way to pull out of a mid-inning tailspin is part of the gig.
For Holmes, it was straight down. Crash and burn.
“I’ve definitely had innings like that when I’ve had to make adjustments,” Holmes said. “I just didn’t do it tonight.”
Boone said later he always sensed that Holmes was “one pitch away.” And in those situations, all he needed was one sinker to give him that get-out-of-jail, double-play grounder. But that didn’t materialize. Of his 16 pitches, only five were strikes.
“Clay has saved out butts a lot,” Cole said. “Sometimes these nights are going to happen.”
Incredibly, and because this is the ’22 Yankees, they almost survived Holmes’ implosion. In came Wandy Peralta, who got two quick forceouts at the plate -- one by his own nifty backhanded stop, and the other on a glove-side scoop by Josh Donaldson. Both had double-play potential, but Jose Trevino bobbled the ball before he could throw to first and Donaldson, thinking the play developed a little slowly, made sure to cut down the tying run rather than throw to second to possibly end the game.
“I thought it was the right decision in real time,” Boone said.
Still, Peralta was one strike away from escaping, but Jonathan India reached for a 97-mph fastball outside the zone and slapped a broken-bat single to center that drove in two runs. That was the margin right there. For a Yankees’ team that rarely loses, it was a third straight defeat for only the second time this season.
“It’s the law of averages to a certain extent,” Cole said. “Nobody’s perfect. It just kind of slipped away from us.”
How appropriate. On a humid, steamy night when Cole said he couldn’t stop sweating, the Yankees finally are coming to understand what their opposition has been feeling this season. The pressure of watching the late innings unravel, starting with those two painful losses at Fenway and continuing Tuesday in the Bronx.
To think that Holmes, who was 16-for-18 in save chances this season, failed to even record a single out as his ERA more than tripled to 1.37 in his first loss this season (Peralta got the blown save). Hard to stomach maybe, but even harder to believe.
“I think this is an outlier,” Boone said.
For Holmes, and certainly for the Yankees.
At least they hope so.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
