In
baseball, a hold is a used to measure the effectiveness of
middle relievers. In general, a pitcher is awarded a hold whenever he enters the game with a lead of three runs or less and leaves without having relinquished the lead.
The hold is thought of as somewhat of a quasi-stat, not only because it is pretty easy to get one, but because there are two competing definitions. The hold was first proposed in 1986 by John Dewan and Mike O'Donnell, who worked together on The Chicago Baseball Report. Since then the hold has been picked up as a stat by two competing stat tracking companies: STATS, Inc. and SportsTicker, who each have slightly different definitions.
The STATS, Inc. definintion has been gaining momentum of late and is the one I stated above, with the added stipulations that a pitcher must get at least one out, and can also be awarded a hold if he pitches three innings or more without giving up the lead, even if the initial lead was more than three runs.
The SportsTicker definition is the same as the one above, except that the pitcher need not record an out to get a hold, as long as the lead is not relinquished. ESPN.com, for example, gets its stats from STATS, Inc. while USA Today gets its stats from SportsTicker, so even major publications will not always match up on who got a hold last night and who didn't.