DUNEDIN, Fla. — For three months, the 2022 Yankees seemed set to go down as one of the greatest baseball teams ever. They were on pace to match or break the major league record of 116 victories and, of greater consequence, to win their first World Series title since 2009.
Instead, they failed to win 100 games before they were swept by the Astros in the ALCS, and a loaded roster of forensic investigators would be needed to identify all the reasons why. But one player embodied the strange narrative arc of the 2022 Yankees as much as anyone did: Clay Holmes. He was Mariano Rivera over the first half of the season, and something substantially less than that over the second.
Holmes made the All-Star team in his first full season in The Bronx, and before the break he looked nothing like the pitcher with the 5.57 ERA that the Pirates had traded away. When Yankees manager Aaron Boone gave him the news that he was headed to Los Angeles for the Midsummer Classic, Holmes responded, “I’m glad it’s as a Yankee.”
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