Clay Holmes is still learning to become a holder again.
On Tuesday, the hope of the METS was a solid step forward in that process, despite a somewhat flattering statistics line.
The right -hander, which emerged as a main relief with the Yankees, mainly in the strength of a sinking that would launch again and again, now it must trust a more diverse arsenal if it will successfully pass at the beginning.
And in a 10-5 victory over Miami, Holmes showed domain glimpses on an ice cream, dry and windy day in Citi Field. He followed a first entrance, when he walked two and cooled a couple of races, with a strong entrance race from the second to the fifth.
In a moment, Holmes withdrew eight consecutive batters to five per strikeouts and route to 10 strikeouts in his career.
He did it without his best sinking and trusted more in his change and even in his small use of four seseamer.
“I have to use my arsenal and have the conscience of pivoting in forcing sinking,” said Holmes, who faced a Marlins alignment for a second direct exit.
While making the transition back to Bee a starting pitcher after six years as a reliever, Holmes Haas discussed the challenges of effectively launching the games.
For the first time this year, Holmes reached the sixth entry of an excursion, and was the most dominant in the fourth and fifth entries, when he struck out five and only allowed a flying ball to the center.
Holmes increased his change and did not get any dirt ball outs, an stunner for a pitcher who had a ground ball rate of 67.9 percent in the game and that was second among the relievers a year ago with a ground ball rate of 65 percent.
“He felt strange,” Holmes said about the lack of land. “They had many left, the wind was blowing and changed my arsenal, so maybe a few days I will get less ground balls. I have to go with throws in areas that play better … I got some swing-And-fis. It is part of the adjustment.”
It was a perfect day for Holmes, whose day ended with a single walking walk to the Griffin cone followed by a double of Otto López with the METS for four races. Huascar Brashobán entered and delivered a race score territory to Liam Hicks before Derek Hill launched his first home run of the season to the center of the right to reduce the advantage of the Mets to a race.
He made a little disaster of the final Holmes line, since a cooling of four races in 5 ¹/₃ entries in an 87 release output, but there was reason for optimism for him and the Mets in his third beginning of the season.
“It was really good,” said Carlos Mendoza. “Better than the line score. The conditions were really difficult, especially their releases moved so much and was windy.”
Mendoza special liked that Holmes would recover from his first entry of 24 releases to enter the sixth.
“After the first post, with the walks, it seems easy,” said the manager. “I give you credit for going out in the sixth after what we saw in the first entrance.”
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