QUEENS, NY — The results of piggybacking Clay Holmes and Sean Manaea in Tuesday night’s 8-3 win over the San Diego Padres were good enough for Mets manager Carlos Mendoza to give it another go.
New York will combine their two veteran starting pitchers once again on Sunday in their home regular-season finale against the Washington Nationals. Holmes, who got the ball first on Tuesday at Citi Field, went four innings on 53 pitches, allowing two runs on three hits — two of them solo home runs — while striking out two.
Manaea, who was relegated to the bullpen role after yielding a 7.71 ERA over his previous seven outings, went the final five frames, allowing one run on four hits with four strikeouts.
“The aggressiveness, competing in the strike zone, his ability to elevate the fastball,” Mendoza pointed out as to why Manaea was so good on Tuesday night. “But I think it’s just conviction there with every throw, every pitch he makes. Expanding when he needs to, getting ahead, staying on the attack. There’s a lot to like there. So it was good to see him going out there and having that type of performance.”
It is unclear in what order Mendoza will deploy the two starters, though. With more left-handers at the top of their lineup, the Mets’ skipper could choose to start with Manaea, the veteran southpaw, and have Holmes relieve him.
“Being adaptable is a huge asset for situations like this,” Manaea, who pitched out of the bullpen two years ago while with the San Francisco Giants, said. “I lean on that. It felt like a normal routine. Just took it and ran with it.”
His last two outings have been promising enough. After yielding four runs in the first two innings of his previous start against the Philadelphia Phillies, he has now allowed just one run on four hits with eight strikeouts and one walk across his last eight innings of work.
“I backed myself into a corner and had to start punching my way out,” Manaea said. “It feels good, but I can’t let my guard down. I think that’s probably how we got to this situation in the first place. I still got work to do, and it’s coming down to crunch time.”
Playing the role of that second arm coming out of the bullpen obviously is not a foreign concept to Holmes, either. The righty is in his first season as a starting pitcher after spending the last seven as a reliever, including a stint as an All-Star closer across town with the Yankees.
“I think it’s just the mentality and the idea that whatever it takes, we’re willing to do,” Holmes said. “It may take some creativity; it may take some things that don’t seem normal. This is not something new, the piggybacking thing, but the bottom line is that we want to win.”
He admitted that there was “no real set plan” on Tuesday night in terms of how many innings he was going to pitch. The game itself dictated that San Diego’s right-handed center-fielder Jackson Merrill was going to be his last batter of the night with lefties on deck. It just so happened that striking him out was the final out of the fourth inning to end his night on a round note.
“You know your strengths, you know the lineup, you know how you want to attack things,” he said. “Whenever that starts, whenever that ends, at the end of the day, it’s not really in your control. What you can do is how you prepare and how you want to use your strengths, and how you want to attack the lineup, and just go out there when your name is called.”
