Clay Holmes Has Been Everything the Cubs Needed
The Cubs traded for Clay Holmes at the trade deadline to enhance their pitching depth.
He has given the Cubs that, and much more.
He has made five outings with the team since being traded and has a 1.55 ERA in that time. What is fascinating is that Holmes has allowed five earned runs in his time with the Cubs. Four of those five came in his first outing with the club in Kansas City.
So although Holmes has a 1.55 Earned Run Average, which is fantastic, it arguably should be even lower because the majority of the damage came in his first outing. In fact, excluding that first outing, Holmes has a 0.36 Earned Run Average in twenty-five of the twenty-nine innings he has thrown for Chicago.
Holmes has been exactly what the Cubs wanted and has emerged as the likely Game One starter for the playoffs.
There were many reasons for the Cubs going out to get Holmes, but one that has particularly stood out is how he relies on the defense behind him with his pitching style.
This is similar to the theory behind the move to acquire David Peterson; they both produce a lot of ground balls. This is an obvious advantage for the Cubs because they have the best defense in baseball, by a wide margin. In his time with the Cubs, Clay Holmes has produced 64 outs from both ground balls and fly balls. Forty-eight of those outs have come from ground balls rather than fly balls. The expectation with Holmes was that he would force the opposition to hit a lot of balls on the ground, and the defense would turn those into outs. That is exactly what has happened.
In his most recent outing, Holmes threw six shutout innings against the division rival Brewers.
Craig Counsell said after that contest on Marquee Sports Network:
“Clay’s been awesome, and I think he’s done exactly what we thought he would do.”
This points to Clay Holmes’s success and Manager Craig Counsell’s confidence in his new pitcher. Since his first start for the Cubs on August 8, Clay Holmes ranks seventh in Earned Run Average across MLB. He also leads the league in ground ball percentage over that span, and it’s not particularly close.
He has a ground ball percentage of 67.5%, and the next highest is 58.5%. He has been a stabilizing force for this team, and there is a lot of confidence that when he pitches, the Cubs will come out on top.
With 19 games remaining in the regular season, the Cubs are in a race with the Phillies for the top National League Wild Card spot and home-field advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
Clay Holmes will have a large impact not only on what’s left of the regular season but also in the playoffs.
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Categorized:Cubs