It only took 4 starts for Yankees fans to make Clay Holmes realization Mets knew all along

Clay Holmes' first regular season start in a New York Mets uniform showed off some of the former Yankees closer's familiar foibles. He walked plenty, he struggled early, and he failed to provide adequate length. Still, Holmes kept the Mets in the game, and since Opening Day in Houston, it's safe to say Yankees fans have wasted plenty of time waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Hasn't dropped yet.

Holmes, with all his baggage, is a constant location question mark. A ticking time closer ready to miss the outside corner by six inches on his first pitch at any given moment, prompting a Bronx-wide release of, "Oh, HERE we go!" But Holmes without that heavy load of preconceived notions? Looks like a tank. He's a 6'5", 245-pound hoss. That screams "durable starter," if you don't have any of the requisite knowledge of his previous body of work.

It's tough to predict who'll hold up and who won't, but given that body type, believing in a Holmes blank slate feels like a fairly safe assumption. So he might have a bad start every so often. You know who else does? Every starter in the world.

The Mets knew they had the template, and could shrug off some speed bumps, as long as the probability of eventual success was high. Yankees fans couldn't get past the initial "Good F***ing Luck!" sentiment long enough to realize there would probably be moments where Holmes looked incredible - and enough of them to justify the contract. So far, through four starts, the opening salvo is the only outlier; he's struck out 28 men in 19 2/3 innings for a first-place team.

Former Yankees closer Clay Holmes is doing exactly what the Mets expected him to

[Wouldn't be a hater if I didn't note the 1.47 WHIP entering Sunday's start screams, "Some regression incoming!" though. Wouldn't be prudent if I didn't hate just a little bit.]

Who knows where we go from here? Maybe Holmes has some early steam to work off, but struggles to maintain momentum as the innings build. Maybe, eventually, he and Juan Soto switch places as the Most Scorned Ex-Yankees on the Mets Roster. For now, though, it seems like the Mets bet that they could polish a bulldog, and they've gotten their wish. If it ever starts to sputter, they'll have a pretty excellent reliever on their hands as well - something the Yankees also knew and forgot because of misuse and bad casting.