Mets pull Clay Holmes after five as innings count becomes a factor

Clay Holmes posted four 1-2-3 innings and one shaky frame in which he yielded two runs to land at 75 pitches in a tie game through five.

Carlos Mendoza made the decision there to pull Holmes and turn to his revamped bullpen, but the skidding Mets went on to drop a 3-2 decision to the Guardians for their seventh loss in eight games.

Holmes didn’t have a major issue with the quick hook as he navigates his way through a rising innings total during his first full year as a starting pitcher over parts of eight seasons in the major leagues.

“I was feeling good. Obviously, it’s not really my call, but I think just all things considered, he felt like it was best to go to the pen there, but I was feeling good,” Holmes said afterward. “Just one of those things, when you’re in a pennant race and you have a bullpen like we do, and the game’s really close, there’s going to be some of those decisions where everything’s not really in your control.

“So he made the decision he thought was best for the team and best for the win.”

Holmes was replaced by Gregory Soto in the sixth, and the Guardians scratched across the go-ahead run against Tyler Rogers one inning later.

Holmes had retired the first nine batters he faced and was staked to an early 2-0 lead.

Cleveland tied the score in the fourth on RBI singles by Kyle Manzardo and Gabriel Arias before Holmes recorded another scoreless inning in the fifth.

“We’re set up bullpen wise there, third time through [the lineup],” Mendoza explained. “[Holmes] was really good the first time through, and then we saw the second time, that fourth inning, they gave him a hard time.

“So I knew I was going to be aggressive there. … But he did his part. He did his job.”

The two-time All-Star reliever mostly has done that since signing a three-year contract worth $38 million to be a starter after mostly closing games for the Yanks the previous 3 ¹/₂ years.

The 32-year-old righty is up to 122 ¹/₃ innings over 23 starts, 52 ¹/₃ more than his previous high with the Pirates and Yankees in 2021.

“At this point in the season, this amount of innings, I’m really kind of encouraged where I’m at. But at the same time, you can’t just totally be shortsighted and just totally go by how I may be feeling now,” Holmes said. “It’s a really hard thing to do, to just go out and triple your innings. Especially because we’re in a pennant race, and we plan to be playing in October, and we all need to be at our best down the stretch.

“The reality of it is, yeah, my innings are getting up there, and we just want to keep me feeling good. Right now I feel like I’m in a good spot, I’ve bounced back well. But there’s still more to take into account than just right now.”