The Mets got the Clay Holmes news they were dreading and the news they were hoping for in the same update.
Manager Carlos Mendoza confirmed Tuesday that Holmes will be transferred to the 60-day injured list after fracturing his tibia on a 111.1-mph comebacker from Yankees rookie Spencer Jones last Thursday. The good news, if there is any, is that the Mets still expect Holmes to pitch for them again this season.
That’s a real win compared to what this initially looked like. Watching the replay of the comebacker is hard. Holmes finished his delivery, the ball came back at him faster than most people can register, and he went down immediately. The kind of comebacker that ends seasons. The Mets feared the worst.
What they got was bad, but recoverable. Tibia fracture. Six to eight weeks of shutdown for the bone to heal. Then a full spring training-style buildup that could take another four to six weeks. Add it up and Holmes is looking at a return sometime in late August or early September, just in time for the playoff push.
The catch is the surgery question. It remains uncertain whether Holmes will need a surgical repair. If he does, the timeline shifts later. If he doesn’t, he has a chance to be back for the stretch run and potentially the playoffs.
This injury hurts the Mets more than any other pitcher loss they could have suffered. Holmes had reinvented himself as a starter this season after years as the Yankees’ closer. He came into Friday’s game with a team-best 1.86 ERA among Mets starting pitchers. He was the most reliable rotation arm they had.
The bigger context is that the Mets are in first place in the NL East and have been carried by their pitching all season. Losing Holmes for two months in a tight division race is the kind of injury that can flip a season. The Phillies are right behind them. The Braves are starting to play better. The Mets cannot afford to give back ground in the standings while their best starter heals.
Carlos Mendoza has options. Brandon Sproat is ready for a longer look. David Peterson is healthy. They will piece together five starting pitchers without falling apart. But Holmes was the guy who was supposed to take the ball in a Game 1 of a playoff series, and now that conversation has to wait until late summer at the earliest.
The Yankees, on the other side of this, are not getting off the hook for Spencer Jones drilling a fellow New York pitcher with a comebacker. Jones is a rookie outfielder. The hit was clean. Holmes is teammates with half the Yankees clubhouse from his years in the Bronx. It’s the kind of weird crossover injury that only happens with the Subway Series, and Holmes is going to be reminded of it for the rest of his career.
The fact that the Mets are even talking about a return this season is a small miracle. A 111-mph comebacker that fractures your shin bone could easily end a year. The fact that doctors think the bone will heal in 6-8 weeks and that Holmes will have time to ramp back up before October is the best outcome a team can hope for in this situation.
For now, the Mets have to weather the storm. Their best pitcher is on the shelf for two months. If they hold the division by August, the reward is getting an ace back.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
