Pinstripe Alley Podcast Ep. 162: What’s Wrong With Clay Holmes Week

The Yankees went through some ups and downs this past week, with the highs of winning back-to-back games at Fenway with good showings by the offense and the lows of three blown nights in a row. They had leads in each game on Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday, but they all evaporated and two of them came on blown saves from Clay Holmes. The now-All-Star closer is experiencing his first bumps of the season, but we still have confidence in him.

The Yankees did rebound to snap the three-game skid with a walk-off win on Wednesday night against the Reds, but they may have lost Luis Severino for awhile in the process. The right-hander departed with shoulder tightness and even if his MRI comes back clean, the Yankees seem likely to use the All-Star break to their advantage and rest him for a bit with the now-healthy Domingo Germán, JP Sears, and others prepared to fill in.

Other topics include the newest Yankees All-Stars, musings on home-field advantage, Jameson Taillon’s struggles, Gerrit Cole’s Rafael Devers problem, Aaron Hicks’ ugly foul, Aaron Judge battling through a slump, the rival Blue Jays canning manager Charlie Montoyo, the Royals affecting trade talks in an unfortunate way, and Matt Carpenter surging into the Yankees’ B-Ref Top 12 (because why not?). Then, we wrap up with our Yankee and Manfred of the Week.

You can listen to the show on the web player below, here, or on any of your preferred podcast apps — to name a few, we’re on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, PlayerFM, and iHeartRadio.