Clay Holmes helps keep Mets season alive in win over Marlins

Abbey Mastracco, New York Daily News on Sep 27, 2025

Published in Baseball

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MIAMI — The drums and the noisemakers came out around the top of the sixth. Finally, the atmosphere at LoanDepot Park had some life.

With more fans in attendance for the visiting team than the home team, it had been nearly lifeless for most of Friday night and for five innings Saturday as the New York Mets fought to keep their season alive.

Thanks to a heroic start by Clay Holmes, it’s still alive with only Game 162 left to play. A 5-0 win over the Miami Marlins keeps the Mets (83-78) neck-and-neck with the Cincinnati Reds for the final NL wild-card playoff spot.

A first-inning double by Pete Alonso scored Francisco Lindor to give the Mets a 1-0 lead, but then the Mets stranded runners on the corners and the tension grew thick.

Alonso hit his 38th homer of the year off right-hander Eury Perez (7-6) in the third to make it 2-0 to briefly ease it. No lead is ever safe with the Mets, but with the right-handed Holmes on the mound only three days since he last pitched — in a relief role, no less — fans could be forgiven for holding their breaths with every pitch.

Holmes tossed six scoreless innings while holding the Marlins (78-83) to only one hit and three walks with two strikeouts. In his first season as a starter, he finished 12-8 with a 3.53 ERA, pitching a career-high 165 2/3 innings. There was a learning curve, and not all of his outings were pretty, but Holmes gave the Mets reliability with a healthy season and ate innings when the rest of the staff couldn’t.

It was his best start in months, and it came when the Mets absolutely needed it the most. When Holmes is at his best, he gets weak contact and outs on the ground, which is exactly what he did Saturday. He worked quickly, efficiently and carefully.

The entire Mets infield seemed to take extra caution with every hard ground-ball, making sure they fielded everything cleanly and their throws were accurate. For weeks, they’ve been saying they need to clean up the errors and misplays that have contributed to their losses, only to end up bobbling routine plays night after night.

There were no bobbles or wobbles Saturday. So often, the Mets have looked shaky in times when they needed to stand tall. A group of immensely talented players, some of them even elite, have confounded baseball since June with their seeming inability to put all three aspects of their game together consistently. The team hasn’t been able to figure it out either, frustrated to no end with being asked why they haven’t been able to put it all together.

Ask just about anyone on the team or affiliated with it and they’ll tell you the same thing: If they had an answer, they would have fixed the issue by now.

Nothing is fixed as they head into the final game of the regular season, but they’re still in the race, which is the only thing that matters.

In the top of the sixth, Jeff McNeil doubled to the right-field corner off of left-hander Lake Bachar. Alonso scored from second to go up 3-0. A crowd of 35,609 — many of them Mets fans — drowned out the drums. Holmes retired the Marlins in order in the bottom of the inning, getting three ground-balls to finish his day. Finally, the fanbase was able to breathe just a little easier.

By the time the ninth inning rolled around, the Mets fans were dancing with the drums and roaring as they rallied to score two.

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