I Hate The Hold.

I’m going to ridicule the “hold” statistic in FireJoeMorgan fashion. Here goes! According to Major League Baseball:

The hold is not an official statistic, but it was created as a way to credit middle relief pitchers for a job well done.

So the hold unofficially gives credit to middle-relief pitchers? I’m not really sure what that means. I guess MLB also thinks it’s a pretty dumb stat?

Starting pitchers get wins, and closers — the relief pitchers who come in at the end of the game — get saves, but the guys who pitch in between the two rarely get either statistic.

This is really thoughtful of MLB. Wins are a stupid way to measure starting-pitcher performance and saves are a stupid way to measure closer performance, so let’s find a stupid way to measure middle-relief performance. And let’s not stop there — let’s make the hold even stupider than the win and save.

So what’s the most important thing one of these middle relievers can do? “Hold” a lead.

Sounds right. Seems innocent enough. But here’s where things get really stupid…

If a reliever comes into a game to protect a lead, gets at least one out and leaves without giving up that lead, he gets a hold.

Here’s the scene: World Series. Bottom of the 8th inning. Road team up 5-2. Six outs away from winning it all. Its best middle reliever comes in. He gets an out, but then surrenders a single and a homerun. 5-4. But heck, he shouldn’t feel bad about himself — his team still has the lead. Let’s unofficially give him credit for his performance. Good job, Jeemer!

By the way, it appears that some stat services define the hold differently. (I guess people feel they can use artistic discretion with the hold because MLB made the stat “unofficial”). According to these folks, a reliever doesn’t even need to record an out to get a hold. Way to go, Mike MacDougal! And thank you Yahoo! for making the hold even worse than it already was.

But you can’t get a save and a hold at the same time.

That makes sense, I guess. You know what doesn’t make sense? Amazingly, you can get a hold and a loss at the same time! Check this out. That is just plain stupid.