Clay Holmes had a feeling something might be brewing. In the midst of his fourth season with Pittsburgh, the right-handed reliever was accustomed to seeing the Pirates unload players at the Trade Deadline, and he wondered if he’d be one of their 2021 exports. Word had spread that All-Star second baseman Adam Frazier was being shipped out, and on the flight back from a 2-4 West Coast trip that put the Pirates at 38-61, Holmes got a text message from ex-teammate and close friend Jameson Taillon, saying how awesome it would be if they were reunited in New York.

Holmes loved the people he worked with in the Pirates organization, the only franchise he had known since Pittsburgh called his name in the Draft a decade earlier. But the thought of escaping the National League Central cellar to play for a contender was too exciting to ignore. The wheels in his head were turning.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to pack up this apartment in one day and move somewhere else?” Holmes said to his wife, Ashlyn, the morning after receiving Taillon’s text.

With no official update from his agent or any general manager, Holmes went about his off-day as usual.

After breakfast, he and Ashlyn headed to the local Target to pick up a few items. Strolling past the ubiquitous red-and-white bullseye logos, Holmes heard his phone ring. He answered the call -- and although it wasn’t completely unexpected, hearing the news that he had indeed been traded was still a moment that he’ll never forget. Clay and Ashlyn were about to embark on an exciting new chapter in their lives -- but not before taking care of one very important matter of business that had not previously been on the to-do list.

“I need to go back and grab me a razor.”

***

This season, a beardless Clay Holmes will look to build upon an initial tenure with the Yankees that can only be described as outstanding. When the team traded infield prospects Diego Castillo and Hoy Park for Holmes last July 26, few outside of Yankee Stadium expected Holmes -- whose career ERA in 91 games with Pittsburgh stood at 5.57 -- to become a force out of the bullpen. But in 25 games with the Yankees, Holmes went 5-2 with a sterling 1.61 ERA, and his 0.79 WHIP in 28 innings of work was the best mark on the team (outside of the 0.50 WHIP Luis Severino produced in his six-inning stint upon returning from Tommy John surgery rehab). But Holmes’ renaissance in the Bronx is not the simple “change of scenery” tale one might expect. Rather, it’s about faith -- and the good that can come when someone believes in you, and when you, in turn, believe in yourself.

The Yankees were visiting the Rays that final week of July, coming off a weekend trip to Boston in which they lost three out of four to fall nine games out of first place, when Holmes joined his new team. He immediately felt comfortable, having spent every one of his professional springs in Bradenton’s “Pirate City,” on the southern coast of Tampa Bay. He caught up with Taillon and with Gerrit Cole, who was selected first overall by the Pirates the same year that he got drafted with pick No. 272. And after his first meetings with his new coaches, Holmes was raring to charge out of the bullpen gate. Manager Aaron Boone, pitching coach Matt Blake and bullpen coach Mike Harkey laid out their plan, which called for deploying his “elite” 96 mph sinker against right-handers as often as possible -- and in some of the highest-leverage spots.

“Excited to get him,” Boone said on July 27. “[We] feel like he’s going to be a guy that already is very tough on righties but has the stuff and the repertoire to even go to another place. He’s having a really strong season, a lot better than his ERA would suggest. This is a guy with a really good arm [who] gives us a really interesting look in our bullpen as kind of a righty assassin but also a guy that we feel like there’s still room in there for him to continue to grow as a really good reliever in this game.”

The staff’s plan for Holmes would end up working out nicely, but adding essentially one pitch -- even one as filthy as Holmes’ sinker -- to the bullpen’s arsenal was not going to be enough to fuel a Yankees ascent to the top of the AL East. Holmes made his Yankees debut on July 29, facing the minimum three batters and recording the final three outs of a 14-0 loss to the Rays that had catcher Kyle Higashioka describing the third-place team’s season as “definitely not what we deem to be in the realm of acceptability.”

The Yankees’ front office concurred and continued to reshape the roster, acquiring lefty reliever Joely Rodríguez and two-time All-Star outfielder Joey Gallo from the Rangers that same day. And as the Yankees flew from Tampa to Miami for an interleague series against the Marlins, the players learned that three-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove Award winner Anthony Rizzo would be joining them to play first base.

Yankees brass had signaled that it still believed the team could do something special -- and Holmes was more than ready to do his part. Two more scoreless outings in Miami helped the Yankees complete a three-game sweep. On Aug. 7, Holmes helped run the Yankees’ winning streak to five in a row, tossing 15 pitches -- 12 of them sinkers -- and getting four outs; three of them strikeouts. He missed a couple weeks in the middle of August with COVID-19, but when he returned on Aug. 24 in Atlanta, his perfect sixth inning helped give the red-hot Yanks their 11th straight win, a streak that would top out at 13.

Everything Holmes had dreamed about as a kid -- wearing a Yankees uniform, pitching in big games down the stretch, helping his team win -- was coming true. When he thought about his journey to get to that point, it almost seemed like a miracle.

***

On Dec. 2, 2020, in a tweet announcing that they had agreed to 2021 contracts with three players -- including Taillon, who would be dealt to the Yankees the following month -- the Pirates also announced, “We have declined to tender a contract to RHP Clay Holmes.” From an outsider’s perspective, it seemed like the final gut-punch in an already brutal year for the reliever. In a Spring Training game on Feb. 29, a Nelson Cruz comebacker had fractured Holmes’ right fibula. Two weeks later, the pandemic hit, shutting down the sports world for months. Holmes worked his way back from the broken leg in time for Opening Day on July 24, tossing 1 1/3 innings in a 5-4 loss at St. Louis, then spent the remainder of the season on the IL with a right elbow sprain.

Still, he knew that he had something special with that turbo sinker, and he couldn’t help but remain hopeful -- upbeat, even -- that the best was yet to come. After all, faith and positivity are embedded in Holmes’ DNA.

Back in Slocomb, a small city of about 2,000 people less than 10 miles from the Florida panhandle in southeast Alabama, there were two places you’d likely find Holmes and his two brothers, Trey and Jacob, when they were growing up -- “either at a ballpark or doing something with the church,” Holmes says.

Their father, Wendell Holmes, went to seminary school and is a pastor at Place of Grace Church in Slocomb. He nurtured his sons’ love of sports, coaching their Little League Baseball and youth football teams. Still, the elder Holmes knows the limits of his influence: On a recent episode of the “Stories” podcast, hosted by author Grace Thornton, Wendell laughed when asked if he’s the one responsible for teaching Clay the “demon sinker” that breaks in on the hands of right-handed batters.

“No, that is a natural ability, a God-given ability,” the pastor said. “The particular kind that he throws, very few people can do what he’s doing. That came straight from God. ... I knew that God was doing something with him.” (Clay says that the pitch -- a fastball that he throws with a two-seam grip -- is just something that always felt naturally comfortable to him.)

The matriarch of the family, Teresa Holmes, grew up on a farm in rural Alabama and went on to become a licensed professional counselor and master-level therapist, helping people of all ages face the challenges associated with mental health throughout the course of her long and distinguished career.

Holmes refers to both his parents as role models who have inspired him, on and off the field.

“Growing up in a Christian home is something I’m very thankful for,” he says. “Baseball, especially when it becomes your career, it’s very easy to get beaten up by the game and have it become your identity, and it makes the highs and lows a lot worse. So, my faith has been an instrumental part of my career -- handling the successes and the failures and just trying to have an impact on people around me and trying to make a difference in the clubhouse.”

Seeing Teresa’s selflessness and work ethic, and the impact she has had on people, has motivated Clay to invest in the lives of not only his teammates, but others as well, particularly children. Last offseason, he returned to Slocomb Elementary School to kick off a school-wide reading event by reading part of E.B. White’s classic tale, “Charlotte’s Web,” to students.

Holmes also lent a hand at Baseball Country, a training facility and ministry for youth baseball players run by former Yankees pitcher Sam Marsonek in Jena, Ala.

A 4.0 student who was valedictorian at Slocomb High, Holmes clearly views baseball as something he does, not what he is. He dabbles in photography and likes to recharge mentally during the offseason by spending a few days hiking the Appalachian Trail. It’s easy to foresee Holmes doing great things even after his playing career is over, but don’t expect that to come anytime soon. With a pitch -- and a brain -- like his, teams would be foolish to overlook him.

Two days after being non-tendered by the Pirates, he agreed to return on a Minor League deal; by the end of Spring Training 2021, he had earned a spot back on the team’s 40-man roster. And while the Pirates would end the season 40 games under .500, Holmes would find himself pitching on baseball’s biggest stage, albeit not how he could have envisioned.

***

Boone’s prediction that Holmes would continue to grow was right on point. As the Yankees fought tooth-and-nail down the stretch last September, the skipper called on Holmes in one big spot after another. The reliever picked up the victory in an emotional, back-and-forth battle with the Mets on Sept. 11, and won again two days later in a 6-5, 10-inning victory over Minnesota that saw the Yankees come all the way back from a 5-0 deficit. Heading to Boston for the final weekend of September, the Yankees swept a three-game series, with Holmes providing scoreless outings in two of them.

“Man, it was amazing,” Holmes recalls. “When you dream of the big leagues, that’s kind of what it was: situations where everybody’s watching, and it’s a battle between some good teams fighting for one or two spots. Those definitely were situations where we knew every night, we just needed to go out and win that game; focus on that game only. It was refreshing to have that attitude and trust the guys around you.

“We won one game, and we started building some momentum into that stretch in Fenway, and it was an awesome experience. You just feed off the energy, you feed off each other, and those are the games you want to be pitching in.”

The sinker that comprised roughly half of Holmes’ offerings in Pittsburgh was now being unleashed nearly 75 percent of the time in New York. It was hellish on righties, who batted .176 in 176 at-bats against Holmes in 2021. And he was becoming just as tough on lefties -- in 22 plate appearances after Holmes became a Yankee, left-handed batters managed just four singles, only two of which came on sinkers -- a development that would prove pivotal in his postseason debut.

Two weeks after the sweep in Boston, the Yankees returned to Fenway for the 2021 American League Wild Card Game. Gerrit Cole, hampered by a hamstring injury, battled as best he could, but it wasn’t his night. Kyle Schwarber led off the third inning with a solo homer that put Boston ahead, 3-0, and when the next two batters both reached base, Boone signaled for Holmes.

It was a bit of an odd sensation for the 28-year-old; the excitement of pitching in the playoffs for the first time, mixed with the understanding that Cole, whom he has held in the highest regard since they were drafted together, was exiting after the shortest postseason outing of his career. Holmes recalls heading down to Pirate City right after signing his first contract and being told he should expect a roommate. In walked Cole, the stud out of UCLA, the No. 1 overall pick in the Draft who had just inked a multimillion dollar signing bonus. The ace-to-be saw Holmes, the ninth-round pick out of Slocomb High, shook his hand, and said, “Hey, do you want to go out and play catch?”

“It was a Sunday, nothing was going on in Pirate City, so we went out, played some catch, did some stuff, and I felt like that was the first moment I realized -- obviously I knew Gerrit’s talent, where he was drafted and kind of what he’d done already -- but I just kind of felt the edge that he had. A guy that talented that was coming in and the first thing he wanted to do was go out and play catch and get some work in. It was just pretty impressive for me, and it’s something I’ve never forgotten.”

With men on first and second and nobody out, cleanup hitter Xander Bogaerts, who had hit a two-run homer off Cole in the first inning, stepped to the plate with a chance to break the game open. Holmes quickly drew ahead, 1-2, then got Bogaerts to whiff at a 96 mph sinker below the knees for the first out.

That brought up the left-handed-hitting outfielder Alex Verdugo who, like Holmes, was playing in his first career postseason game. Holmes hadn’t given up a hit to a lefty since Sept. 16, retiring the previous five he had faced, including the Rays’ Wander Franco twice during the Yankees’ final series of the regular season. The right-hander knew that if he could get out of this jam, it could give his team a huge boost.

Holmes’ first pitch to Verdugo was a 96 mph sinker in the dirt that Higashioka corralled -- ball one.

The next pitch was a belt-high 96 mph sinker that likely would have been called a ball outside, but Verdugo swung and grounded it right at sure-handed third baseman Gio Urshela, who started a 5-4-3 inning-ending double play.

“I think things kind of came full circle there,” Holmes says. “Gerrit obviously had an impact on me and was pretty influential early on, just how he’s treated me. And so, to be able to come in for him in that game and pick him up, pick the team up, it was pretty special. Any time I can pick any teammate up, it’s a good feeling and it’s what you want to do. You don’t want to leave anybody hanging out there. But the fact that I was able to do that for Gerrit and keep us in the ballgame a little longer felt pretty rewarding.”

Holmes tossed a scoreless fourth, and Rizzo’s sixth-inning homer cut Boston’s lead to 3-1, but ultimately the Yankees’ season ended that night with a 6-2 loss. Still, the feeling of picking up his teammates -- especially one as important as Cole -- will continue to buoy Holmes as he aims to be an even bigger contributor in 2022.

“My body’s feeling great, and I’m excited to just put in more work and keep building on how I finished the year,” he says. “I’m looking forward to getting started down in Spring Training. I think we’re going to have a good group, and obviously, we’re going to be going for the championship, the World Series. I think some special things can happen.”

Nathan Maciborski is the executive editor of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the Spring 2021 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.