Fickle bullpens leaving Yankees and Mets with maddening what-ifs

So the Yankees are going to get “creative” with their closer’s role, according to manager Aaron Boone. But Clay Holmes will also be “part of the mix” going forward. This announcement comes one day after Holmes blew his MLB-high 11th save of the season — in 40 tries — two clear of the rest of the field. 

It also came on a day when you couldn’t simply type Holmes’ name into X’s search engine without it automatically widening the search to “Clay Holmes terrorist.” So, yes: these are trying times indeed in the last two innings of baseball games for the Yankees. 

(And as Mets fans read those last 18 words, they nod ruefully in quiet sympathy with a little bit of understanding. Such is the business of watching baseball in New York in 2024. The fun doesn’t even start until “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is over.) 

For all the folks pleading that the Yankees needed to not only demote Holmes but ship him to the instructional league, this was something, if not exactly the thing they were looking for. But it’s also the best of a host of bad options. And even this — hoping to magically find a hot hand who’ll remove the fear factor from the ninth inning — isn’t a reliable plan. 

Remember how terrible Edwin Diaz looked earlier this year — four blown saves in eight appearances in May? When the Mets gave him a breather, two different fill-ins — Adam Ottavino and Jake Diekman — immediately blew saves in two of the next seven games. And when Diaz served his suspension for sticky substances, the team blew three more. 

Every now and again, it helps to remember that without the brilliance of the great Mariano Rivera, the Yankees might not have won any of the five championships they collected from 1996-2009. Rivera essentially rewrote the definition of a setup man in 1996, then from 1998-2000, and again in 2009, he registered the 27th out of the games that clinched titles. 

But it also helps to remember that without the stumbles of the great Rivera, the Yankees might’ve added three more titles. Sandy Alomar Jr. foiled Rivera in Cleveland in 1997, Luis Gonzalez (and others) sabotaged him in Phoenix in 2001 and a host of Red Sox led by Dave Roberts spoiled the party in Boston in 2004. 

Even the very best who ever lived are human. Even Tom Hanks made “Joe vs. 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 hard job. Almost every time you walk on a field a game is in the balance. There are no breezy first-inning 6-3 groundouts for closers. 

“You can give me a thousand more situations just like that,” Joe Torre said in 2004, “and I’m gonna give Mo the ball every single time.” 

“All you can do is have faith that excellent players are going to be excellent and sometimes that’s just not realistic,” Terry Collins said in 2016, referring to Jeurys Familia, who saved 94 games in 2015 and ’16 but surrendered home runs to Kansas City’s Alex Gordon and San Francisco’s Conor Gillaspie to kneecap both seasons in October. 

Reliable closers provide oxygen for a team in its most dire moments. And sometimes seasons die because of them. 

Almost all relief pitchers — again, even elite ones — are maddeningly fickle. That’s the mystery of the gig. Sometimes they’re unhittable, and sometimes they’re unpitchable. Sometimes in the same season. 

Hell, sometimes in the same week. 

And yet, in the offseason, the headlines are still generated by the acquisition of sluggers, and rotation pitchers. Bullpens are built in silence and in quiet desperation. Sometimes that works out fine. Holmes, after all, became a fine closer in the first place when the Yankees stopped waiting for Aroldis Chapman’s radar-gun-shattering velocity to translate to reliability in big moments. 

Of course, even in Chapman’s most volatile full year, 2019, he had a save percentage of 88.1. Holmes and Diaz are both roughly 73 percent, which is unworkable for teams with ambitions. Of the other nine members of the top 10 in saves besides Holmes this year, the next-lowest percentage is Diaz’s brother, Alexis, who checks in at 86 percent for a lousy Reds team. 

Here’s why Boone’s decision makes perfect sense. As likely as anyone else, the pitcher from the motor pool who may emerge as the best man to replace Holmes is … Holmes. Edwin Diaz, for all his misfires this year, has also shown flashes of his old self. And Holmes is the same guy who, as late as May 20, appearing in his 21st game, was 13-for-13 in save chances through 20 innings and 81 hitters with a Blutarsky ERA — 0.00. Can’t be better than that. 

That day, against the Mariners, he inherited a 4-1 lead in the ninth and gave up four runs and took both a blown save and a loss. It’s been a scuffle since. Still, the Yankees were only a half-game out of first in the AL East before Wednesday, the Mets still only a half-game out of the wild card. 

There’s no telling where we’d be as a baseball city with two excellent bullpens. Or, in truth, two ordinary ones.