Mets 2025 projections: Clay Holmes

The Mets had Seth Lugo, who preferred not to be in the pen, for seven seasons and he made just 38 starts. In two years after leaving the Mets, Lugo is 24-16 with a 3.20 ERA in 59 games as a starter. And he made the All-Star team last season. Trevor Williams appeared in 40 games for the Mets and made 12 starts. Last year he was 6-1 with a 2.03 ERA in 13 starts for the Nationals. This offseason, the Mets figured they’d try the other end of things, signing Clay Holmes with the plan to convert him from a reliever to a starter.

The Yankees traded for Holmes during the 2021 season. Up until that point, he had good strikeout numbers but was a mediocre, at best, reliever. But he turned things around immediately after arriving in the Bronx. In 3-plus years with the Yankees, Holmes had a 2.69 ERA and a 1.116 WHIP, twice making the All-Star team. But Holmes hit a rough spot in the second half of the 2024 season, resulting in him losing his closer’s spot. Now he’s with the Mets, hoping to reinvent himself as a starter. Here are the predictions from the computer models for Holmes:

ATC – 132 IP, 3.66 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 8.55 K/9, 0.70 HR/9
Marcel – 63 IP, 3.43 ERA, 1.238 WHIP, 9.1 K/9, 0.7 HR/9
OOPSY – 165 IP, 3.20 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 9.32 K/9, 0.61 HR/9
Steamer – 156 IP, 3.55 ERA, 1.34 WHIP, 8.42 K/9, 0.71 HR/9
THE BAT – 132 IP, 3.47 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 8.32 K/9, 0.65 HR/9
ZiPS – 110.2 IP, 3.66 ERA, 1.34 WHIP, 7.80 K/9, 0.65 HR/9

It’s hard to know how much stock to put into these numbers. The non-Marcel projections are all giving him a starter’s workload. But is there any kind of “reliever penalty” built into the rest of these starter numbers? If so, it seems to me we would all take these numbers from Holmes here in 2025 in a skinny minute. Even the most pessimistic forecast – ZiPS – calls for him to have an ERA significantly below four. Perhaps most viewed Holmes as the team’s fifth starter heading into Spring Training. But even if he’s now the fourth starter after the injury to Frankie Montas, only 70 starters last year topped 100 innings with a sub-4.00 ERA. That would make him a solid SP3. And if we look at a 3.66 ERA, only 50 starters topped 100 innings and had a better ERA.

And if somehow Holmes is able to match the OOPSY forecast, only 21 pitchers put up those types of numbers in 2024. Jack Flaherty had 162 IP and a 3.17 ERA last season. In the OOPSY universe, Holmes’ forecast of 165 IP is tied for the 54^th-most, with Flaherty. And his 3.20 ERA is tied for 45^th, with Shohei Ohtani. Talk about keeping good company!

In the Mets’ write-up by ZiPS creator Dan Szymborski, not much clarity is given to the Holmes projection. Here’s the total of what he said about it: “ZiPS does have confidence in Kodai Senga and the Clay Holmes Starting Experiment, and it sees David Peterson as a solid league-average starter.” But if you thought the numbers were encouraging, you should see who Szymborski has as Holmes’ “top near-age comps.” Up first is Zack Wheeler, followed by Billy O’Dell and Brad Penny. For those of you like me who have no frame of reference with O’Dell, he pitched from 1954-1967 and had six seasons where he reached at least a 2.0 fWAR, including 1962 when he won 19 games and posted a 6.4 fWAR for the pennant-winning Giants. Of course, everyone reading this knows about Wheeler and Penny had five straight seasons with at least a 3.0 fWAR before his career was upended with an upper back injury. Again, this is pretty good company.

As a reliever, Holmes was essentially a two-pitch guy, throwing a sinker and a slider, with both being plus pitches. However, he had issues with his sinker in the second half of last season, which led to multiple poor outings and the loss of his closer’s job. To increase his repertoire, Holmes has added a “kick change” to his arsenal. The pitch has great horizontal movement and is throw around 10 mph slower than his sinker. The hope is that it will help neutralize LHB.

When news of the Holmes’ signing first hit, my reaction was lukewarm, at best. But the more time spent thinking about it, the more this signing makes sense. The worst-case scenario (non-injury department) is that Holmes flops as a starter and moves to the pen to be a quality set-up man. And the upside is something akin to the OOPSY numbers from above, which would make him a low-end SP1. That’s a pretty safe floor, with fantastic upside.

The Mets have chosen Holmes to start Grapefruit League play, which means we’ll get to see him pitch Saturday. That will be one of many interesting things to watch, as Mets baseball returns to our lives. Here’s my totally biased projection for Holmes in 2025:

130 IP, 2.98 ERA, 1.248 WHIP, 9.3 K/9, 0.7 HR/9

You’ll have more credibility if you weigh in now with what you think Holmes will do this year. All predictions for him are welcome, although the ones that use the same five categories as the article make me smile.