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Clay Holmes has noticed at Citi Field that the winds can swirl at field level, never more so for him than Sunday afternoon, when it was particularly swooshing his staple sinker.
Not far in Holmes’ past, he would have bulled forward. He, after all, was employed one inning at a time. And he mainly threw that one pitch as a reliever — his sinker.
But against the Cardinals, Holmes stuck around for six innings and 91 pitches — both highs for his five Mets starts — because, in Carlos Mendoza’s words, “he really had to pitch … he had to use all of his weapons.” So he hurled four-seamers and sweepers, cutters and changeups — lots and lots of changeups, a pitch he literally created in a laboratory in the offseason. “It really made me feel like a pitcher,” Holmes said.
The emphasis should be on starting pitcher.