Braves reliever Will Smith received a Hold in Game 1 but has not received the points for it. Is this related?
I’ll investigate ASAP, but the system is probably going to re-pull stats from yesterday very soon.
It turns out this is its own thing - scorekeeper gave Will Smith the hold a little later, and we’ll have it corrected with our data provider either later today or tomorrow.
Great, thanks!
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This issue never got resolved.
I’ll update once it is!
Ross Stripplings stats and the dodgers score tonight are backwards
My bad. I read it wrong.
I’ve been on our data provider (Sports Info Solutions, who provides stats to FanGraphs) about this issue for 3 days and I finally got to the bottom of it.
Holds are not an official stat (despite being on MLB.com), so there are not set rules on how to award a hold that are consistent between stats providers.
This is best explained by The Hardball Times:
The main remaining technicality that affects how holds are awarded is whether the game is official (i.e., has gone five innings) when a reliever enters. In theory, before that five-inning mark there cannot be a winning pitcher, so the question of saves and holds and blown saves is academic. This may seem to be a quibble, something that can be disregarded once a game has played out to official length, but the majority of sources disagree. BIS, STATS, Elias, and USA Today will not award a hold or a blown save to a pitcher who enters a game in the fifth inning or earlier. Baseball-Reference and MLB.com will, for both.
BIS is now Sports Info Solutions, and they do not award holds to pitchers who enter a baseball game before said game is official (i.e. before 5 innings are completed). The 7-inning doubleheader games this season also only go official once they have five complete innings played, so since Will Smith came in to the game in the 4th inning with 2 outs, Sports Info Solutions will not award him with a hold.
Despite any personal issue I may have with this interpretation of the hold, this is the scoring Ottoneu has used since the beginning and we are sticking with stats as provided by our stats provider. I will continue to work with them to understand if there is leeway for this in the future, especially for 7-inning games.
While this isn’t much consolation for teams who played Will Smith on the 9th, hopefully this makes sense and we all learned something new together. Thanks for bringing this to my attention and compelling me to learn more about how holds work.
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Bumping this thread because Aaron Loup (LAA) has a hold from MLB.com yesterday (4/15/2022) but since he came in before the 5th he did not get a hold from our data provider.
I’ll try to flag these situations when they come up - hopefully less now that there aren’t 7 inning games.
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Hi Niv, guessing this is a data provider thing rather than Ottoneu, but Justin Wrobleski (RP, LAD) pitched on Saturday and according to his news blurb (below) and the mlb box score ( MLB Gameday: Dodgers 13, Giants 7 Final Score (09/13/2025) | MLB.com ) he was credited with a hold, but didnt receive points for one. In a race that may (but obviously unlikely to) be decided by 4 points, so gotta break out all the stops 
. Hopefully the data provider can resolve without a need for your intervention. Again - thanks for all you do!
September 14, 2025 11:23 AM : Wrobleski notched a hold against the Giants on Saturday, striking out four batters over 2.1 perfect relief innings.
Analysis: Both teams turned on the offense early in the contest, and when Wrobleski entered in the bottom of the fifth frame, Los Angeles was clinging onto a two-run lead with the tying run coming to the plate. The southpaw struck out Heliot Ramos to end that threat, then cruised through two more perfect frames while the Dodgers tacked three runs onto their lead. Wrobleski went through a rough stretch in mid-August during which he took two losses and gave up five runs over three outings spanning 5.1 innings. He’s turned things around dramatically since then – over his past four appearances, Wrobleski has pitched 7.1 scoreless frames while posting a sizzling 13:1 K:BB.
Wrobleski entered the game in the 4th inning with 2 outs. That is before the game is official, so BIS will not give him a hold. This thread describes the background on this.
Ah. ok - disappointing but understand. Thanks, Niv for the quick reply.
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