Nice Hold, But You Lost
Forget about the calls at the plate.Forget about the transfer rule.
It's time for Major League Baseball to step up and fix the most pressing issue in the game today — set-up reliever stats.
In the seventh inning, Braves relief pitcher Ian Thomas entered the game with his team leading 4-3.
The first two hitters singled before he finally got the first out of the inning. With that, his night on the mound was finished, but his statline was not.
In comes reliever David Carpenter, but he didn't have much success either. He did get the final two outs the inning, but it wasn't before giving up a pair of hits that allowed both of Thomas' runners to score and put the Braves behind 5-4.
In the books, it goes down as a blown save for Carpenter, the runs and loss get credited to Thomas, and Thomas somehow gets a "Hold."
Yes, he gets a hold.
I know a lot of people do not like the hold as a statistic, but I'm not one of them. I love it. However, I hate when it is awarded in situations like this.
Tell me, how do you hold a lead and get a loss at the same time? Is that not an illogical stat?
The blown save can be a misleading statistic, too — for example, when a pitcher loads the bases with one out in a one run game, and the next pitcher gets the blown save even when in the process of getting the other two outs, a run scores.
Nevertheless, the pitcher still had a chance to save the game so I understand it. But the fact that in that same scenario, the initial pitcher still gets a hold, boggles my mind.
Baseball needs to fix this because if we're going to judge relievers on "holds," we need a more accurate assessment as to how well they hold the game. Putting the game-tying or game-winning runs on base and watching them later score should not constituted a "successful" outing in the boxscore.
If your runners score, just as you can get credited with the loss, you should lose the right to earn a hold.
It's just common sense, you know, like the transfer rule.
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