The Braves Unlocked Grant Holmes With One Simple Adjustment

The Atlanta Braves have found an inefficiency in their search for pitching: Organizations that don't know how to optimize a pitcher's arsenal.

There have been a few examples of Atlanta making an acquisition and unlocking a new level of potential with some simple changes. Reliever Pierce Johnson is a great example of this - acquired from the Colorado Rockies at the 2023 trade deadline, he went from a 6.00 ERA in 39 innings with Colorado prior to the trade to a 0.76 ERA in 23.2 innings after the trade with one simple adjustment: His curveball.

With the Rockies, Johnson threw 50% curveballs and 40.2% fastballs, making up the difference (9.8%) with his slider. Atlanta recognized that the curve was by far his best pitch and dramatically increased its usage, with Johnson hitting 71.3% usage down the stretch for Atlanta, minimizing both the fastball (24.6%) and the slider (4.1%) to do it.

The success of reliever-turned-starter Grant Holmes is another feather in their cap, and acording to The Athletic 's Eno Sarris , there's a simple reason: Atlanta gave Holmes a slider.

On the latest episode of "The Craft: A Pitching Podcast" , with Sarris and Pitcher List's Nick Pollack and aptly titled " Who Needs a Slider ", Sarris told a story about sitting down with Holmes in San Francisco's Oracle Park this week and chatting about baseball.

"Your strikeout rate went through the rate when you got to Atlanta. What did you do differently that you weren't doing in Oakland for six-plus years (in the minors)?" asked Sarris, and Holmes had the simplest of explanations. "We tried a slider."

Sarris followed up by mock-screaming, while co-host Nick Pollack expressed disbelief that that was the magic cure for Holmes' struggles in the minors.

"How is that not the first thing - you're a righthander? Can you throw a slider?"

Sarris told Pollack that it is not even an exotic variation of a slider that Holmes is now throwing, explaining he didn't even take a picture of the grip. "It's a regular boring ass slider. Two fingers (on the seam). Nothing weird."

But that "boring ass" slider is the key. Early in his career, after Holmes was traded from the Los Angeles Dodgers to the Oakland A's, he peaked as high as number six on Oakland's top prospects list ( 2017, on Baseball America ) and his arsenal was sinker, curveball, and changeup. Oakland later added a cutter to the mix.

But Holmes never seemed to put it all together, struggling to miss enough bats in Double-A Midland and Triple-A Las Vegas to either stay on prospect lists or get a major league call-up. Coming out of the canceled 2020 minor league season, Holmes converted to a reliever and had ERAs over 8.00 in both of his first two seasons before being released in late July of 2022. Atlanta signed him two weeks later, stashing him in Triple-A Gwinnett last year and then had him make some starts in Gwinnett this summer before his major league call-up.

The arsenal change Atlanta pushed on Holmes has worked. In his starts for Atlanta, it's his second-most used pitch (29.4%) behind the fastball (37.2%), with the remainder being covered by his curveball (19.5%), cutter (11.7%), and changeup (2.1%).

Not only is the slider being featured heavily, it's been effective as well. On the season, the pitch has the second-best batting average allowed (.255) and wOBA (.267), both behind the fastball (.176 BAA and .216 wOBA).

It's a simple change, one that Sarris speculated wasn't made by Oakland for other arsenal preservation reasons.

"You always want to give grace, because there's real people in these jobs trying their hardest. I think the idea was [...] that he had a good curve and maybe he didn't want the blend the slider and the curve, so they taught him a cutter and he strill throws the cutter some."

"But it boggles the mind that they wouldn't have tried a slider. The reason that we're laughing, if you're not catching on, is that this is a slider league. Like 90% of the league throws a slider. It seems to almost be step one."

"I have healthy respect for pitching development in Atlanta"

Sarris wraps his story by explaining that Atlanta's method of teaching the slider to Holmes was pretty common to those of us who follow Braves prospects.

"So he's got this good curveball and they're (Oakland) teaching him a cutter, then he come to Atlanta and one of the things they do is make him a reliever. I think this was really intentional. So they make him a reliever and all he throws were fastballs and sliders. He's not even throwing his bread and butter curveball that he thought would get him to the big leagues. [...] He gets a velo boost from relieving, okay, and then they move him back to starting and he holds onto some of that velo boost."

(This is a similar pattern to what the Braves did with top prospect AJ Smith-Shawver - the last two seasons, during his rise through the minors, he temporarily shelved his curveball to focus on the fastball and slider. After re-introducing the curveball later last year, we saw a similar arsenal restriction this spring where the team had him focus on throwing his changeup, often using it in situations where a heater or a breaking pitch would be the preferred go-to, to build his trust in the pitch.)

But back to Holmes: Sarris specualted that the temporary move to relief was also to focus on boosting his velo in a non-physical way. "I think it's sort of a mindset where when you're relieving, you're like 'I'm going to throw as hard as I can until they take the ball away from me", right? And I think what they did was sort of jog that mindset so that when he's starting, he still has that 'I'm just going to throw as hard as I can until they take the ball from me' (mindset)"

It's not a strategy that will probably work for every single prospect, but "when you're dealing with someone who is like 28 and hasn't made it to the big leagues yet..." explained Sarris, with Pollack finishing the thought "you're kind of like 'got nothing to lose, let's just see how long I can hold this'."

In fact, Holmes has managed to hold that velocity pretty well in his starts. Going into the seventh inning as a starter for the first time last night, Holmes' fastball still sat in the same low-to-mid-90s range. His 1-2 fastball to strike out shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald for the 2nd out of the inning came in at 95.1, the 8th-hardest pitch of his time as a starter and the fastest pitch of the game for the righthander.

With starter Reynaldo López (forearm tightness) set to return off of the injured list next Tuesday for the series opener against the Philadelphia Phillies, it's unknown what the immediate future holds for Holmes - a return to the bullpen is likely for the stretch run, but he should absolutely be in the starting mix for the 2025 season.

Watch the entire episode of "The Craft: A Pitching Podcast" on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts .