The bullpen for the New York Yankees is a very different team this season after having the lowest ERA in the MLB in 2023. Important players left over the winter to be replaced by relatively unknown newcomers; several players are sidelined early due to injury.
It would have made sense to decline. With the second-best ERA and second-highest win probability added in the majors, the Yankees’ relief staff is once again among the best in the game.
The most noticeable holdover serves as the anchor and is Clay Holmes, the only qualifying reliever who hasn’t yet given up an earned run in 2024.
Thanks in part to their excellent bullpen, the Yankees are off to a 27-15 start. Holmes may be the finest closer in baseball. Luke Weaver, a reliever for the Yankees, spoke the capital letters “STUD.”
In his second full season as New York’s closer, Holmes leads the American League with 12 saves while recording 21 strikeouts in 17⅓ innings with three walks.
And anyone in the Yankees’ clubhouse will tell you that Holmes’s earlier this month in Baltimore performance is still a talker.
The Yankees, six outs from victory, were nursing a 2-0 lead after falling to the Orioles in the first two games of the four-game series.
A third straight loss to their chief competition for the American League East would be as backbreaking as it gets on May 1. The first two Orioles reached base at the bottom of the frame.
Moments later, with one out and the top of the Orioles’ order looming, Yankees manager Aaron Boone summoned Holmes for a five-out save. What followed was an electric, eye-popping performance.
With two quick sliders and a sinker that clocked in at 97 mph, Holmes struck out Gunnar Henderson, who was awarded the American League Player of the Month two days later.
The All-Star catcher for the Orioles, Adley Rutschman, was then nearly knocked down by a slider after he was whiffed twice on powerful sinkers over the plate.
Problem solved. To seal the win, Holmes then held the middle of the Orioles’ potent order scoreless in the ninth inning.
