According to manager Aaron Boone, the Yankees will get “creative” with their closer’s role, but Clay Holmes will also be “part of the mix.” This announcement comes a day after Holmes blew his 11th save of the season – an MLB record – in 40 attempts, two saves ahead of the rest of the field.
Plus, this happened on a day when you couldn’t just type Holmes’ name into X’s search engine without the search automatically expanding to “Clay Holmes terrorist.” So, yes: These are indeed difficult times for the Yankees in the final two innings of baseball.
(And as Mets fans read those final 18 words, they nod ruefully, in quiet sympathy and a little understanding. That’s what it’s like watching baseball in New York in 2024. The fun doesn’t begin until “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is over.)
For those who argued that the Yankees not only need to demote Holmes but also send him to the Instructional League, this was something, if not exactly what they were looking for. But it’s also the best of many bad options. And even this – hoping to magically find a hot hand that will take the fear factor out of the ninth inning – is not a reliable plan.
Remember how awful Edwin Diaz looked earlier this year—four blown saves in eight appearances in May? When the Mets gave him a break, two different relievers—Adam Ottavino and Jake Diekman—immediately blew saves in two of the next seven games. And as Diaz served his suspension for sticking substances, the team blew three more.
Every now and then, it helps to remember that without the genius of the great Mariano Rivera, the Yankees might not have won any of the five championships they won from 1996 to 2009. Rivera essentially redefined the definition of a setup man in 1996, then from 1998 to 2000, and again in 2009 when he pitched the 27th of the title-clinching games.
But it also helps to remember that without the great Rivera’s slip-ups, the Yankees might have won three more titles. Sandy Alomar Jr. foiled Rivera’s plans in Cleveland in 1997, Luis Gonzalez (and others) sabotaged him in Phoenix in 2001, and a whole bunch of Red Sox led by Dave Roberts spoiled their party in Boston in 2004.
Even the very best that ever lived are human. Even Tom Hanks made Joe Versus the Volcano. Even the Beatles recorded Why Don’t We Do It in the Road. And even Mariano Rivera wasn’t always perfect. It’s a tough job. Almost every time you step on a field, there’s a game on the field. There are no easy 6-3 groundouts in the first inning for the closers.
“You can give me a thousand more situations like that,” Joe Torre said in 2004, “and I’ll give Mo the ball every time.”
“You can only trust that great players are going to be great, and sometimes that’s just not realistic,” Terry Collins said in 2016 of Jeurys Familia, who saved 94 games in 2015 and 2016 but allowed home runs to Kansas City’s Alex Gordon and San Francisco’s Conor Gillaspie in October, derailing both seasons.
Reliable closers provide a team with oxygen in its worst moments. And sometimes seasons die because of them.
Almost all relief pitchers – even the best – are incredibly fickle. That’s the secret of the job. Sometimes they’re unbeatable and sometimes they’re impossible to pitch. Sometimes even in the same season.
Hell, sometimes in the same week.
And yet, the offseason still sees the headlines being made by the signings of hitters and rotation pitchers. Bullpens are built quietly and in quiet desperation. Sometimes it works out well. Holmes, after all, only became a good closer when the Yankees stopped waiting for Aroldis Chapman’s radar-blasting speed to translate into reliability in key moments.
Of course, even in his most volatile year in 2019, Chapman had an 88.1 percent save percentage. Holmes and Diaz are both at around 73 percent, which is out of reach for ambitious teams. Of the other nine members of the top 10 in saves this year besides Holmes, Diaz’s brother Alexis has the next lowest percentage, at 86 percent for a lousy Reds team.
That’s why Boone’s decision makes perfect sense. The pitcher from the motor pool who could turn out to be the best man to replace Holmes is probably just like any other… Holmes. Edwin Diaz, for all his failures this year, has also shown flashes of his old self. And Holmes is the same guy who, as recently as May 20, when he played his 21st game, had 13 of 13 save chances in 20 innings and 81 at-bats with a Blutarsky ERA of -0.00. It doesn’t get any better than that.
That day, he inherited a 4-1 lead in the ninth inning against the Mariners, allowed four runs and suffered both a blown save and a loss. Since then, it’s been a tussle. Neither team had to go through a ninth inning on Wednesday, the Mets happily crushed the Red Sox 8-3 (thanks to a great team-wide bullpen effort), the Yankees suffered a tough 10-6 loss to the Rangers despite some ninth-inning turmoil.
Still, after Wednesday, the Yankees are only half a game away from first place in the AL East, and the Mets are still only half a game away from the wild card spot. There’s no telling where we would be as a baseball town with two excellent bullpens. Or, to be honest, with two mediocre ones.
