Clay Holmes threw a sinker one of the first times he ever played catch. He was seven years old at the time.
Holmes is the breakout star of this Yankees season. It took him seven years to reach the
majors with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who drafted him from an Alabama high school in 2011.
At Fenway Park on Thursday before a match against the Boston Red Sox, Holmes said, “I had
a lot of people saying to go with a short-arm action, to make so many big mechanical changes.
Ultimately I went against it, because I knew there was maybe a risk of losing my sinker. That’s
when I really was like: ‘The sinker is going to be my ticket. I need to really figure out how to
make it as good as it can be.”
Holmes is currently the only pitcher in baseball who throws his fastball, the sinking twoseamer, at least 80% of the time. For generations, the sinking fastball was the pitch for people who valued efficiency and soft contact.
Holmes started studying the movement of his sinker even before his trade to the Yankees. He
made sure that a trackMan device collected data from each of his bullpen sessions.
Michael King said, “I originally hated playing catch with him, and I wouldn’t do it when he
first came over here because all he was doing was ripping sinkers. And now that I feel like he’s gotten more comfortable with it, he’s not working on it as much. He’s just getting loose, so that’s easy to catch.”
He also said that Holmes releases the pitch so high that he tricks hitters who rarely see a pitch
drop from that much from that angle.
The sinker recently has been out of vogue, mainly because the strike zone is tighter on the
edges and because hitters started adapting to it.
Now, the Yankees have changed their bullpen to go east to west instead of a vertical attack.
This was an intentional decision by the Yankees, who have targeted cultivated sinkballers to stay ahead of hitters’ next major adjustment.
Holmes is the breakout star of this Yankees season. It took him seven years to reach the
majors with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who drafted him from an Alabama high school in 2011.
At Fenway Park on Thursday before a match against the Boston Red Sox, Holmes said, “I had
a lot of people saying to go with a short-arm action, to make so many big mechanical changes.
Ultimately I went against it, because I knew there was maybe a risk of losing my sinker. That’s
when I really was like: ‘The sinker is going to be my ticket. I need to really figure out how to
make it as good as it can be.”
Holmes is currently the only pitcher in baseball who throws his fastball, the sinking twoseamer, at least 80% of the time. For generations, the sinking fastball was the pitch for people who valued efficiency and soft contact.
Holmes started studying the movement of his sinker even before his trade to the Yankees. He
made sure that a trackMan device collected data from each of his bullpen sessions.
Michael King said, “I originally hated playing catch with him, and I wouldn’t do it when he
first came over here because all he was doing was ripping sinkers. And now that I feel like he’s gotten more comfortable with it, he’s not working on it as much. He’s just getting loose, so that’s easy to catch.”
He also said that Holmes releases the pitch so high that he tricks hitters who rarely see a pitch
drop from that much from that angle.
The sinker recently has been out of vogue, mainly because the strike zone is tighter on the
edges and because hitters started adapting to it.
Now, the Yankees have changed their bullpen to go east to west instead of a vertical attack.
This was an intentional decision by the Yankees, who have targeted cultivated sinkballers to stay ahead of hitters’ next major adjustment.
