{"id":97464,"date":"2025-03-14T15:40:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T19:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=97464"},"modified":"2025-03-14T15:55:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T19:55:02","slug":"clay-holmes-opening-day-starter-mets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/03\/14\/clay-holmes-opening-day-starter-mets\/","title":{"rendered":"Clay Holmes Garners Opening Day Start for Mets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza named right-hander Clay Holmes as the teams starter on Opening Day. Holmes has made four big-league starts, all of them as a rookie with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2018. He shifted to the bullpen in 2019 with Pittsburgh, transitioning into an All-Star closer with the New York Yankees. Holmes has made 300 relief appearances since his last start.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He earned it,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SNYtv\/status\/1900617989377998902\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mendoza said to reporters<\/a>. &#8220;We like what we&#8217;re seeing. He really put himself in a really good position, showed up here early in camp, he was ahead of everyone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Carlos Mendoza announced that Clay Holmes will be the Mets Opening Day starter <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/LnMG1hxVjc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/LnMG1hxVjc<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MLBONFOX\/status\/1900620094713004262?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 14, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Clay Holmes to Make First Start Since 2018 on Opening Day<\/h2>\n<p>The Mets signed Holmes to a <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/12\/06\/mets-sign-clay-holmes-three-year-deal\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">three-year, $38 million<\/a> contract in the winter. In an ideal spring, the Opening Day nod likely would have gone to left-hander Sean Manaea, who emerged as the Mets ace last season and was re-signed over the winter. However, Manaea will start the season on the injured list with a <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/02\/24\/mets-front-end-starter-expected-to-miss-start-of-season\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">right oblique strain<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"399\">Holmes, a two-time All-Star entering his seventh season in the majors, will make the transition from bullpen arm to full-time starter with the Mets this year. Last season with the Yankees, Holmes posted a 3.14 ERA in 67 appearances as a closer, saving 30 games despite blowing a league-high 13 saves. Still, the Mets saw potential and signed him as a starter to bolster the middle of their rotation.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"401\" data-end=\"739\">This spring, Holmes has been impressive, throwing 9 2\/3 scoreless innings with 13 strikeouts. Once known for his sinker-sweeper combination, Holmes has worked diligently to expand his pitch repertoire this offseason. He\u2019s unveiled a new changeup, slider, and cutter to complement the 4-seam fastball he occasionally used with the Yankees.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"741\" data-end=\"1011\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\">With injuries to both Manaea <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/02\/17\/frankie-montas-lat-strain-weeks\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">and Frankie Montas<\/a>, Holmes will now be tasked with a larger role in the Mets&#8217; rotation. He&#8217;ll join Kodai Senga and a mix of Griffin Canning, Paul Blackburn, David Peterson, and Tylor Megill as they await the return of Manaea and Montas.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"741\" data-end=\"1011\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\">Main Photo: \u00a9 Sam Navarro-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza named right-hander Clay Holmes as the teams starter on Opening Day. Holmes has made four big-league starts, all of them as a rookie with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2018. He shifted to the bullpen in 2019 with Pittsburgh, transitioning into an All-Star closer with the New York [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5469,"featured_media":97470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,1071,35],"tags":[4683,5566,1332,4494,1303,6456,5656,3075,5582],"class_list":["post-97464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mets","category-mlb","category-news","tag-carlos-mendoza","tag-clay-holmes","tag-david-peterson","tag-frankie-montas","tag-griffin-canning","tag-kodai-senga","tag-paul-blackburn","tag-sean-manaea","tag-tylor-megill"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97464"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97476,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97464\/revisions\/97476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}