Mets' Clay Holmes' transforming into bona fide starting pitcher: 'He's just on another level'

That’s more than simply a good beginning to the season, Holmes is pitching himself into the Cy Young award conversation and it’s time people everywhere took notice.

“It’s unbelievable,” said manager Carlos Mendoza about his right-hander’s performance. “We saw it again today. That first inning was a battle after the first couple of guys get on and he’s up to like 30-something pitches, [but] before you know it he’s able to get to those middle innings.

“[He] kept making pitches and for him to go back out for the seventh, he’s just on another level right now physically, mentally.”

It’s true, Sunday’s outing didn’t start out the best for Holmes who walked the first two batters he faced as part of a 27-pitch first inning. But after giving up a run four batters into the game, Holmes turned it on and settled in nicely, not only holding the Angels scoreless the rest of the way, but keeping his pitch count low enough to go deep into the game.

After the game, Mendoza marveled at the former reliever’s ascension into ace starting pitcher.

“The way he’s making adjustments in games, the way he’s using his pitches, trusting the defense when he needs to… overall from Clay, solid,” the skipper said.

Over his last three starts, Holmes has allowed three earned runs over 19.2 innings and has gone at least six innings in all of them. Twice already this season Holmes has pitched seven innings after achieving that just once in 2025.

Holmes’ 1.69 ERA is the fourth-lowest in the majors and his 42.2 innings pitched this season is top-10, wildly impressive for a guy who made the switch from reliever to starter just last year.

Holmes credits his success with the “confidence and trust” of his sinker, the pitch that made him so effective as a late-inning reliever in his career and why David Stearns believed he could make the transition to the rotation in the first place.

While the sinker is his bread and butter and the pitch he throws 49 percent of the time, according to Baseball Savant, Holmes knew he would have to expand his arsenal to more than just one pitch, which he did.

Mixing in a sweeper, changeup, cutter, curveball and four-seamer, Holmes has options up there. However, instead of shying away from his sinker this season and abandoning what makes him so special just because his role has changed, the right-hander has embraced who he is and is using it to his advantage.

“I think for me there’s kind of a comfort thing and I feel like – you know the trust with the sinker was always there, but I feel like, especially now I just feel like there’s a lot of confidence and trust with the sinker,” he said. “That’s who I was as a reliever and I knew that was who I would be as a starter, but I felt like I kinda had the confidence and the trust of the sinker and when I have that I feel like I’m able to pitch off of it and really feel like myself and pitch with some confidence.”

Now in his second year as a full-time starter, Holmes knows the ropes a bit more and rather than learning how to be a starting pitcher and focusing on superfluous things, he can dial it in on what kind of starter he wants to be.

So who does Holmes want to be? Someone who unapologetically throws his greatest weapon, the sinker, nearly half of the time.

“I knew I would have to expand the arsenal, it wouldn’t be all sinkers, but with that, I’m not gonna say distracted but you know there has to be some kind of widening of the arsenal and so there’s focus there,” he said. “And I think more than anything this year is just the confidence with the sinker, like I can still pitch off this and it’s more of a mentality thing, just kind of attacking with the sinker.

“That’s kind of what I had as a reliever and it’s not so much, okay let me get ahead with the sinker or kind of use it to set up something else, it’s like here’s the sinker. So I think just getting back to that mentality with it has kind of just helped the life and the finish to it and I think it’s just been helpful so far this year.”