Dumping...Holds?

Anonymous' team is off to a slow start, so like a lot of us, he's wondering if he should dump a category:

I'm in a deep, 12-team, NL-only (32-man rosters) that counts holds. I have a few guys I expected would do pretty well but they have not.

At what point do you cut bait on middle relievers, especially since the sample size at the beginning of the season is so small and there's a chance they could turn things around?

I've never used holds, and there isn't a great equivalent category in non-holds leagues to look at. Saves comes the closest in terms of the league leading number of saves versus the league leading number of holds, but there is a wider distribution of holds amongst a lot of relievers than there is for saves.

April 2008 N.L. Holds Leaders

#	Player	April Holds	Total Holds	Final Rank
1	Ryan Franklin	9	13	36T
2	Chad Qualls	8	22	7T
3	Carlos Marmol	7	30	1T
	Kyle McClellan	7	30	1T
5	Luis Ayala	6	19	12T
	Heath Bell	6	23	4T
	Taylor Buchholz	6	21	9T
	Brian Fuentes	6	6	67T
	Tony Pena	6	23	4T
	Tyler Walker	6	19	12T

The category is also far more predictable than I would have imagined. The only two relievers who got out of the blocks fast who really fell off were Franklin and Fuentes. Fuentes wound up closing for most of the year while Franklin closed for part of the year, so both still provided a lot of value.

Can a slow starter in the category take off later?

2008 N.L. Holds Leaders

#	Player	Total Holds	April Holds	April Rank
1	Carlos Marmol	30	7	3T
	Kyle McClellan	30	7	3T
3	J.C. Romero	24	3	28T
4	Will Ohman	23	2	41T
	Heath Bell	23	6	5T
	Tony Pena	23	6	5T
7	Doug Brocail	22	4	18T
	Chad Qualls	22	8	2
9	Taylor Buchholz	21	6	5T
	Pedro Feliciano	21	5	11T
	Duaner Sanchez	21	4	18T

Yes, but the odds are surprisingly poor. Ohman and Romero are the only relievers who jump out at me as guys who weren't getting holds early who wound up getting them later.

I shouldn't be surprised; I'm just not used to looking at this category. Since pitchers who are holding leads are pitching when their teams are ahead, it makes sense that a fast starter would create trust with a manager and thus generate more hold opportunities. If a team had a Carlos Marmol shutting teams down in the 7th and 8th inning of close games, why wouldn't Marmol keep getting those hold opportunities?

So I'd say that if you're behind the 8-ball early in holds, you definitely should consider dumping the category if you can. You play with holds and I don't, so you know the how the category works better than I do. Is it easy or difficult to pick up holds in your free agent pool? Can you trade for them and, if so, what is your league's market price? Are there any set-up relievers in the free agent pool of your league who are behind an older reliever or injury risk in the free agent pool?

You know the answers better to these questions than I do. But it does look to me like once a reliever starts holding games in April, he's the likely candidate to be holding games the rest of the season, making your road right now a difficult one.