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Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
The Braves weren’t flush with good stories in 2024, but one of them was Grant Holmes’ surprising success as a 28-year-old rookie pitcher. One of the best stories of the 2024 Atlanta Braves season was that of 28-year-old rookie pitcher Grant Holmes, who made his big league debut and ended up being a valuable swing man for the Atlanta pitching staff after toiling for a decade in the minors. Holmes went from pitching well at Gwinnett to dominating as a reliever to serving as a pretty good starter when he was pressed into duty, and finished with some pretty impressive stats considering that he started the year making a fifth stint at Triple-A.
How acquired
The Braves signed Holmes as a minor league free agent on August 13, 2022. Holmes, a first round pick by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2014 out of Conway High School in South Carolina, had been traded to the Oakland Athletics in 2016 in a five-player deal before the Athletics moved on from the right-handed pitcher in 2022.
Holmes was generally well-regarded as a prospect after being drafted, but slid down the rankings due to control issues and shoulder problems. He got considerably worse around the time that the Athletics gave up on him as a starter, which is how the Braves were able to nab him; he spent 2023 pitching unremarkable long-ish relief for Gwinnett.
What were the expectations?
Look, expectations for a former prospect who fell out of starting and had a 3.54 FIP / 4.21 xFIP as a reliever at Gwinnett in 2023 while repeating Triple-A for a third time were going to be moderate at best. Holmes wasn’t really on anyone’s radar as anything more than a warm body fill-in, much less a guy getting multiple turns in the rotation, but that’s exactly what happened.
Holmes was still getting generic reliever projections ahead of the season, but he wasn’t really on the depth chart.
2024 results
The right-hander started the season with the Stripers, pitching effectively enough to earn a call-up to Atlanta on June 16. That call-up pretty much put the destructo-train that was Grant Holmes on the track, as he made his MLB debut against the Tigers with three nearly-spotless innings with a 2/0 K/BB ratio, and basically never looked back.
For the next five weeks or so, Holmes generally worked multi-inning, lower-leverage relief (though he did have a few important outings), and excelled. His first ten relief outings spanned 23 1⁄3 innings and delivered unto Atlanta a 65/55/88 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-); he had a 21/5 K/BB ratio and hadn’t allowed a homer when, following a 5/0 K/BB ratio in 3 1⁄3 innings against the Reds, the Braves gave him a battlefield promotion into a rotation spot.
Holmes’ first start more than rewarded them for this decision, as he threw together an 8/0 K/BB ratio in five frames against the Brewers, though he did allow his first career homer. (The Braves lost that game, but not because of Holmes.) He then stuck in the rotation for three more starts, pitching well in all of them, but getting some poor results in two — and allowing a homer in each. After that, it was back to the bullpen for a month, where he scuffled a bit, and then he finished out the season with three more starts and a relief appearance. One of those starts featured his first multihomer game, but he otherwise looked a lot better than in his second relief stint.
All in all, Holmes finished the year with an 85 ERA-, 81 FIP-, and 87 xFIP- across seven starts and 19 relief appearances, tallying 1.2 fWAR in the process. Those numbers are really good, even without context, but considering that he was pushed pretty far in his starts and had to flip between roles a bit, they’re just plain impressive.
What went right?
Holmes played a bunch of roles for the Braves after his promotion, and he generally did so with aplomb. His flexibility was really impressive in the sense that he was pretty much up for anything, best exemplified when he threw long relief on September 29, only to then be forced into starting duty in a do-or-die game against a disinterested-because-they-already-clinched Mets team where he nonetheless posted a 7/1 K/BB ratio in four innings of work.
As a prospect, a knock on Holmes was that he simply walked too many guys despite his good stuff. He finished with a walk rate just north of five percent, one of the best on the team, behind just Spencer Schwellenbach and Raisel Iglesias. He got a ton of chases, and perhaps even more importantly, prevented guys from spoiling his chase pitches: only nine hurlers with 60-plus innings had a higher whiff rate on stuff not in the zone than Holmes.
Seriously, there’s a lot to gush about with what Holmes showed in 2024. His slider and curveball, which really might be more of a single pitch that he can throw at different speeds, showed fantastic command. The bucket of them categorized as a “slider,” coming at 85-86 mph, consistently clipped the bottom of the edge of the zone and got a lot of chases and whiffs, especially when tempting hitters just below the knees. The “curve” bucket, coming in at 84 mph, was used more as a surprise get-me-over strike. The Braves love their z-whiff (swing and miss elicited in the zone), and Holmes seemingly found a way to use the variation in speed along with good command to make it hard for hitters to lock in on something to damage. That helped his fastball play up, too, despite it being a pretty generic offering with poor command.
Holmes really did it all. He was great in his first major league start, as already mentioned...
...and also great in relief, even in high leverage, like when he threw two perfect frames with two strikeouts against the Phillies in what eventually became a 3-1 win over Zack Wheeler on August 20.
What went wrong?
In relative terms, little went wrong for Holmes.
A couple of his starts early on gave him a taste of poor fortune — across his second and third career starts, he posted a 12/4 K/BB ratio but somehow got charged with eight runs in 9 2⁄3 innings.
Though he dominated guys seeing him for the first time in a game (2.60 FIP, 3.21 xFIP), he wasn’t particularly good after that (5.19 FIP and 4.32 xFIP for someone seeing him a second time; 3.17 FIP but a 5.06 xFIP for someone seeing him a third time in a game).
There was a really awkward stretch for him where it seemed like the magic evaporated — in a big series against the Phillies. Holmes appeared in two games in that four-game set, and received two of his three total meltdowns on the season. On August 29, he came on with a one-run lead and the tying run on base, got a groundout, and then gave up a go-ahead homer to Nick Castellanos, failing to blow an 0-1 fastball by him after doing so on the first pitch.
Then, two days later, he was again asked to face Castellanos in a key situation, this time in the bottom of the eleventh with the winning run on base, got ahead of him 1-2 with three straight sliders, and then... threw a fastball down the middle that ended the game.
To be clear, while Holmes clearly didn’t get the better of Castellanos in either instance, it’s not clear what anyone on the Braves side was thinking in either of these situations. Castellanos basically only hits fastballs, and in both situations, the Braves called for a fastball in the zone for some reason, and paid the price.
2025 outlook
Holmes figures to have an inside track to a spot on the Braves 2025 Opening Day roster as a swingman. He certainly earned it with his performance in 2024, but he’s also out of options despite not debuting until the middle of last year because a lot of his time spent wandering the minor league wilderness in the Athletics organization came while he was a member of their 40-man roster. That means that he’ll probably keep a spot for a while unless the wheels totally come off, which is certainly possible. The Braves have even been talking Holmes up as a starter option when talking to the media this offseason, but that’s a pretty transparent leverage ploy, so we’ll leave it at that.
In any case, Holmes projects to be a really good swingman based on his 2024 success. Sure, he probably won’t put up 1.2 fWAR in under 70 innings again, but ZiPS projects him for over 1 WAR in about 90 innings, and Steamer for a bit under 1 WAR in 114 innings, split between starting and relieving. Either of those would be very welcome.
Whether Holmes can repeat his 2024 success remains to be seen, but if he is still with the team when the Braves and Cincinnati Reds take the field for the MLB special game at Bristol Motor Speedway, if Holmes isn’t making the start, then everyone missed the point.
<img alt="MLB: SEP 09 Reds at Braves" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UQZP_b7Tjy6DQzFEh317O7z6Tck=/0x0:3600x2400/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73784950/2170428421.0.jpg">
Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
The Braves weren’t flush with good stories in 2024, but one of them was Grant Holmes’ surprising success as a 28-year-old rookie pitcher. One of the best stories of the 2024 Atlanta Braves season was that of 28-year-old rookie pitcher Grant Holmes, who made his big league debut and ended up being a valuable swing man for the Atlanta pitching staff after toiling for a decade in the minors. Holmes went from pitching well at Gwinnett to dominating as a reliever to serving as a pretty good starter when he was pressed into duty, and finished with some pretty impressive stats considering that he started the year making a fifth stint at Triple-A.
How acquired
The Braves signed Holmes as a minor league free agent on August 13, 2022. Holmes, a first round pick by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2014 out of Conway High School in South Carolina, had been traded to the Oakland Athletics in 2016 in a five-player deal before the Athletics moved on from the right-handed pitcher in 2022.
Holmes was generally well-regarded as a prospect after being drafted, but slid down the rankings due to control issues and shoulder problems. He got considerably worse around the time that the Athletics gave up on him as a starter, which is how the Braves were able to nab him; he spent 2023 pitching unremarkable long-ish relief for Gwinnett.
What were the expectations?
Look, expectations for a former prospect who fell out of starting and had a 3.54 FIP / 4.21 xFIP as a reliever at Gwinnett in 2023 while repeating Triple-A for a third time were going to be moderate at best. Holmes wasn’t really on anyone’s radar as anything more than a warm body fill-in, much less a guy getting multiple turns in the rotation, but that’s exactly what happened.
Holmes was still getting generic reliever projections ahead of the season, but he wasn’t really on the depth chart.
2024 results
The right-hander started the season with the Stripers, pitching effectively enough to earn a call-up to Atlanta on June 16. That call-up pretty much put the destructo-train that was Grant Holmes on the track, as he made his MLB debut against the Tigers with three nearly-spotless innings with a 2/0 K/BB ratio, and basically never looked back.
For the next five weeks or so, Holmes generally worked multi-inning, lower-leverage relief (though he did have a few important outings), and excelled. His first ten relief outings spanned 23 1⁄3 innings and delivered unto Atlanta a 65/55/88 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-); he had a 21/5 K/BB ratio and hadn’t allowed a homer when, following a 5/0 K/BB ratio in 3 1⁄3 innings against the Reds, the Braves gave him a battlefield promotion into a rotation spot.
Holmes’ first start more than rewarded them for this decision, as he threw together an 8/0 K/BB ratio in five frames against the Brewers, though he did allow his first career homer. (The Braves lost that game, but not because of Holmes.) He then stuck in the rotation for three more starts, pitching well in all of them, but getting some poor results in two — and allowing a homer in each. After that, it was back to the bullpen for a month, where he scuffled a bit, and then he finished out the season with three more starts and a relief appearance. One of those starts featured his first multihomer game, but he otherwise looked a lot better than in his second relief stint.
All in all, Holmes finished the year with an 85 ERA-, 81 FIP-, and 87 xFIP- across seven starts and 19 relief appearances, tallying 1.2 fWAR in the process. Those numbers are really good, even without context, but considering that he was pushed pretty far in his starts and had to flip between roles a bit, they’re just plain impressive.
What went right?
Holmes played a bunch of roles for the Braves after his promotion, and he generally did so with aplomb. His flexibility was really impressive in the sense that he was pretty much up for anything, best exemplified when he threw long relief on September 29, only to then be forced into starting duty in a do-or-die game against a disinterested-because-they-already-clinched Mets team where he nonetheless posted a 7/1 K/BB ratio in four innings of work.
As a prospect, a knock on Holmes was that he simply walked too many guys despite his good stuff. He finished with a walk rate just north of five percent, one of the best on the team, behind just Spencer Schwellenbach and Raisel Iglesias. He got a ton of chases, and perhaps even more importantly, prevented guys from spoiling his chase pitches: only nine hurlers with 60-plus innings had a higher whiff rate on stuff not in the zone than Holmes.
Seriously, there’s a lot to gush about with what Holmes showed in 2024. His slider and curveball, which really might be more of a single pitch that he can throw at different speeds, showed fantastic command. The bucket of them categorized as a “slider,” coming at 85-86 mph, consistently clipped the bottom of the edge of the zone and got a lot of chases and whiffs, especially when tempting hitters just below the knees. The “curve” bucket, coming in at 84 mph, was used more as a surprise get-me-over strike. The Braves love their z-whiff (swing and miss elicited in the zone), and Holmes seemingly found a way to use the variation in speed along with good command to make it hard for hitters to lock in on something to damage. That helped his fastball play up, too, despite it being a pretty generic offering with poor command.
Holmes really did it all. He was great in his first major league start, as already mentioned...
...and also great in relief, even in high leverage, like when he threw two perfect frames with two strikeouts against the Phillies in what eventually became a 3-1 win over Zack Wheeler on August 20.
What went wrong?
In relative terms, little went wrong for Holmes.
A couple of his starts early on gave him a taste of poor fortune — across his second and third career starts, he posted a 12/4 K/BB ratio but somehow got charged with eight runs in 9 2⁄3 innings.
Though he dominated guys seeing him for the first time in a game (2.60 FIP, 3.21 xFIP), he wasn’t particularly good after that (5.19 FIP and 4.32 xFIP for someone seeing him a second time; 3.17 FIP but a 5.06 xFIP for someone seeing him a third time in a game).
There was a really awkward stretch for him where it seemed like the magic evaporated — in a big series against the Phillies. Holmes appeared in two games in that four-game set, and received two of his three total meltdowns on the season. On August 29, he came on with a one-run lead and the tying run on base, got a groundout, and then gave up a go-ahead homer to Nick Castellanos, failing to blow an 0-1 fastball by him after doing so on the first pitch.
Then, two days later, he was again asked to face Castellanos in a key situation, this time in the bottom of the eleventh with the winning run on base, got ahead of him 1-2 with three straight sliders, and then... threw a fastball down the middle that ended the game.
To be clear, while Holmes clearly didn’t get the better of Castellanos in either instance, it’s not clear what anyone on the Braves side was thinking in either of these situations. Castellanos basically only hits fastballs, and in both situations, the Braves called for a fastball in the zone for some reason, and paid the price.
2025 outlook
Holmes figures to have an inside track to a spot on the Braves 2025 Opening Day roster as a swingman. He certainly earned it with his performance in 2024, but he’s also out of options despite not debuting until the middle of last year because a lot of his time spent wandering the minor league wilderness in the Athletics organization came while he was a member of their 40-man roster. That means that he’ll probably keep a spot for a while unless the wheels totally come off, which is certainly possible. The Braves have even been talking Holmes up as a starter option when talking to the media this offseason, but that’s a pretty transparent leverage ploy, so we’ll leave it at that.
In any case, Holmes projects to be a really good swingman based on his 2024 success. Sure, he probably won’t put up 1.2 fWAR in under 70 innings again, but ZiPS projects him for over 1 WAR in about 90 innings, and Steamer for a bit under 1 WAR in 114 innings, split between starting and relieving. Either of those would be very welcome.
Whether Holmes can repeat his 2024 success remains to be seen, but if he is still with the team when the Braves and Cincinnati Reds take the field for the MLB special game at Bristol Motor Speedway, if Holmes isn’t making the start, then everyone missed the point.
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