Fantasy Baseball 2025: One sleeper from every MLB division primed to break out

NL East: Clay Holmes, SP, New York Mets

Clay Holmes has had an interesting career as a pitcher thus far, and not a whole lot went right for him in 2024. He blew 13 saves for the Yankees which led all of baseball by a wide margin.

New York is a tough market to play in, especially in the Bronx, and with the season Holmes just had, the media would lead you to believe he's simply not a good pitcher. I think that's far from the case. I believe Holmes really just ended up running into a lot of bad luck in 2024.

Holmes's numbers across the board were just about in line with his career averages. His ERA (3.14), FIP (3.02), and K-BB% (17.0) did take slight dips from 2023 — arguably the best season of his career — but those are still above-average numbers. His 1.302 WHIP was pretty steep, but you can attribute that to a lot of batted ball luck as his BABIP against was .322, but his BB% from 2023 to 2024 actually improved.

As Holmes is making the move across town to Queens, the Mets actually plan to move him to a starter role. I believe this move will bode well for Holmes.

First of all, he is the best in baseball at inducing ground balls. His 65.0 GB% was second among all pitchers in 2024 and he has not yielded a GB% lower than 60% since his rookie year in 2018. Over the course of potentially 150+ innings, that is going to result in some solid production for Holmes, especially in front of a solid infield defense with the Mets.

I'm not too worried about Holmes adjusting to the workload of starting either. He's thrown the tenth most innings out of the bullpen since the start of 2021 and has never been a max-effort pitcher. He features a sinker, slider, and a sweeper, all of which miss bats and barrels. The addition of a more traditional fastball or changeup might help supplement his arsenal in his transition, but it should be a lot smoother than he's been given credit for regardless.