Coupled with Dreschel’s specialty in pitch tunneling, Holmes broke out in a big way upon landing in the Bronx. Dreschel took advantage of Holmes’s perceived weakness – his movement – and turned it into his greatest strength.
In shorter stints, his new repertoire shone.
As a reliever, his sinker emerged as his bread-and-butter, inducing hellacious swings year over year. Coupled with his high release point, his seam-shifted wake and -7.2 VAA gave batters fits. The Seam Shifted Wake phoneme can be observed via the 75-degree difference between the pitch’s spin-based movement and the observed movement indicating a degree of a seam-shifted wake.