Yankees.com: ‘That one’s on me’: Holmes’ rough 9th ends Yanks’ streak at 7

From Bryan Hoch:

The lights went out as Clay Holmes jogged through the bullpen gates late on Monday night, the blaring country strains of Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse” filling Yankee Stadium accompanied by trippy psychedelic graphics. At his teammates’ request, the Yankees have crafted a full theatrical entrance for the closer.

And why not? Until this latest trip to the mound, the sinkerballing Holmes had been nearly perfect, having not permitted an earned run across his first 20 outings. That came to an end as Holmes surrendered four runs in the ninth inning, with New York’s seven-game win streak snapped in a 5-4 loss to the Mariners.

“That one’s on me,” Holmes said. “I feel like I made some good pitches, and definitely some balls found some holes, but I was ahead on a couple of guys there 0-2, 1-2, and put them on base. They could have been big outs.”

With 13 saves already under Holmes’ belt this season, his assignment had been to protect a three-run lead following 7 1/3 dominant innings from starter Marcus Stroman, who had leaned upon Luke Weaver for the last two outs of the eighth.

Now, obviously, a good deal of Holmes’ poor outing was just bad luck, as he got extremely weak contact from Julio Rodriguez and Luke Raley, it was just TOO weak. And then Mitch Haniger drove a pitch into center field that I’d say 75% of the centerfielders in baseball catch, but Aaron Judge is in that 25% of the league’s centerfielders who couldn’t make the play. So yeah, Holmes had some bad luck there. However, he also had two embarrassing walks (one to Cal Raleigh with one out and J-Rod at first base and one EXTREMELY embarrassing walk to Dylan Moore to load the bases with one out and the Yankees clinging to a one-run lead), and the Canzone game-tying sacrifice fly was nearly a grand slam. When Clay Holmes is on, he doesn’t give up drives to deep right field, ya know?

Now look, Holmes has been so good to start the season that obviously he can be forgiven for this awful performance, and SINCE he’s been so good, I guess he’s allowed to be given a long leash, but man, I really don’t think it is an insult to say, “Okay, Clay, don’t worry about it, you just didn’t have it today,” and pull him when he clearly doesn’t have any control over his pitches (he had Dylan Moore, who is a shitty hitter, down 0-2, and he WALKED HIM!).

Obviously, Holmes should have the featured image, but there’s not many good shots of him, so I went with Gleyber throwing the ball away in the ninth, which scored a run and left runners on second and third and one out. Raley probably beats it out even if Gleyber doesn’t throw it away, but maybe Holmes pitches Moore differently if there wasn’t an open base.

The offense earned a lot of the blame, as well, for only scoring 4 runs on 204 baserunners (or something like that).

Stroman, though, was excellent. That’s eight straight great pitching performances by Yankee starters. That’s kind of crazy.

Luckily, the Orioles lost tonight, as well, but boy, sure would be nice to finally get ahead of them in the loss column. Tuesday night’s matchup is another tough one. Woo has looked great since he has returned from the IL.