Clay Holmes, Gleyber, Yankees escaped worst collapse in history by fingernail vs. Rangers

The New York Yankees led Sunday's series finale with the under-.500 Texas Rangers by margins of: 5-0, 6-1, 8-3, and 8-6 with nobody on, two outs, and the heart of the order having been taken care of in the top of the ninth.

They still came within a fraction of a half of a strand of hair away from blowing it, right down to Gleyber Torres' attempt to field the most routine of routine grounders to close it out.

Whether the Yankees had blown this game or not, Clay Holmes would've been the face of malfeasance, but his teammates deserve the lion's share of the blame for what transpired. Over and over and over again.

Holmes was pushed to his personal limits and then some to secure this victory, in large part because Jazz Chisholm, not a third baseman, was unable to field a soft grounder, was bunted towards, and cut in front of Anthony Volpe on what should've been the final out of the seventh, slicing the lead to 6-3 at the time. Juan Soto and Aaron Judge's back-to-back homers extended the gap (briefly) before Mark Leiter Jr. served up a splitter meatball to Nathaniel Lowe, walked Leody Taveras (?), and gave up a Giancarlo Stanton-esque tater to Carson Kelly (??). Therefore, Holmes came into the eighth facing the tying run in Corey Seager, something you have to do if you're Aaron Boone, watching slow-motion disaster strike. It worked ... except for it also didn't, given that Holmes was then forced to enter the ninth, dealing with 3-4-5 after sitting in the dugout and nursing an eight-pitch head start.

Against all odds, he retired both Marcus Semien and Josh Jung to open the frame, but his breaking ball was notably backing up during the Jung AB, which Paul O'Neill pinpointed. After flirting with losing the zone, he lost it entirely with Wyatt Langford at the dish, then was outlasted by Lowe, who did his best Masataka Yoshida impression without finding the seats.

How did Yankees' Clay Holmes pull off a 45-pitch save?

Holmes was scared of his sinker. He also continued to hang his breaker. Nothing about the innovatively painful ninth seemed destined to end in anything but utter disaster, doubled with Adolis Garcia turned soft contact into a RBI single. One-run game, Taveras at the plate and Holmes' tank so empty it was surprising his car could even drift.

To say the game "hung in the balance" would be an understatement. The game teetered with one axle on the edge of a crumbling cliff. Taveras, the Rangers' worst hitter, was certainly talented enough to knock a two-run single or walk against Holmes, trying to breathe inside a skin-tight plastic bag.

It was the game's fault that Holmes was stuck. Did anyone really want Boone to go to Tim Hill? No. This had to be Holmes, and it was about to be an Arm Crime of unfathomable proportions, powered by teamwork.

But somehow, a miracle happened. After dotting 98 for strike two, then missing with two breakers, Holmes induced a soft grounder to Torres. It took long enough to reach Torres' glove that every Yankee fan had more than enough time to remember what soft grounders to Torres often turn into. Unsurprisingly, with Taveras all but surrendering, jogging to first after Holmes' 45th (!!!) pitch, Torres absorbed the ball, stumbled, fell to one knee, and shotputted the pill to DJ LeMahieu at first. Relatively anonymous ballgame over, as this one turned back into "a strange one we'll all remember" in a flash after trying desperately to become the franchise's biggest regular-season disaster, with a golden chance to gain on Baltimore. 8-3 with one out in the eighth!

Look. At Torres. Here. Look at all of it. Now that we know how it ends, watch. Absorb. Gag.

Holmes would've gotten pinned with the goat horns undoubtedly if Taveras had found grass, but in reality, he deserves to be commended for his efforts, extending himself two miles past the point of discomfort and summoning some kind of hacking, coughing rabbit from his sweaty hat. Torres, who also happened to cut in front of Anthony Volpe for the sake of a mid-game giggle, narrowly recording the final out of the seventh? He's still earned our ire and scorn, even as one of the least enjoyable wins in a decade settles in the correct column.