Don Gullett @ baseball-reference.com
Ken Holtzman @ baseball-reference.com
Don Gullett started all 35 simulated Game 4s for Cincinnati. He went 7-14.
Ken Holtzman started all 35 simulated Game 4s for Oakland. He went 14-7.
Gullett's ERA across the multiverse: 2.96. Holtzman's: 2.68. The gap between them is a quarter of a run per nine innings. That is nothing. That is a rounding error. That is the difference between a 92 MPH fastball and a 91 MPH fastball.
The gap between their records is seven wins.
The multiverse did not punish Don Gullett because he was bad. It punished him because it could. What follows are the most egregious examples.
Gullett pitched 8 innings for Cincinnati. He struck out 8. He allowed 1 earned run. His ERA for this game was 1.12. That is a dominant performance by any standard in any timeline.
Holtzman pitched 9 innings for Oakland. He allowed 4 earned runs. His ERA for this game was 4.00.
But Holtzman won, and Gullett lost.
The pitcher who struck out 8 batters in 8 innings had to hang an L in a World Series game, while the pitcher who game up 4 times the earned runs walked away with the win. Cincinnati's 3 errors behind Gullett allowed 4 unearned runs to score. Gullett held up his end, but Cincinnati's defense did not. So the universe charged Gullett with an L anyway.
Timeline 13 used the 1942 strategy engine. Timeline 16 used the 1912 engine. Different simulated decades, same cosmic joke.
Gullett: 8 innings, 1 earned run, 4 strikeouts. ERA: 1.12.
Holtzman: 9 innings, a complete game, 3 earned runs. ERA: 3.00.
But Holtzman won, and Gullett lost.
Two different strategy engines. Two different simulated eras of baseball philosophy. And the multiverse had some fun at Gullett's expense both times: give Gullett the lower ERA, the dominant career performance on the biggest stage, the World Series, and then give him the loss.
Gullett pitched 8 innings. He gave up 6 hits and 1 earned run. A second run scored on a defensive miscue - unearned. This is the kind of outing that, repeated across a 162-game season, wins you the Cy Young. Executed in a clutch World Series game, it can make you a legend.
His offense gave him 1 run.
One earned run allowed, but only one run of support. The margin between victory and defeat came down to a single error, by Cincinnati's defense.
Gullett got the loss.
Gullett pitched 7 innings. He gave up 3 hits. He struck out 6. Cincinnati led 1-0 when he left, and he looked set up to have a World Series win under his belt.
But he did not get the win. He did not get the loss. He got nothing.
Cincinnati won this game 2-1 in 15 innings. After Gullett left, four more pitchers held Oakland scoreless for eight more innings. The game went on for twice as long after he departed as the time he spent on the mound.
Sprague, who pitched the 14th and 15th innings, got the win. Gullett got the no-decision.
The game went on without him.
This is the one.
Cincinnati's pitching staff threw a combined no-hitter in Timeline 31.
Gullett pitched 5 innings: zero hits. Tom Hall pitched 1 inning: zero hits. Ed Sprague pitched 2 innings: zero hits.
And Cincinnati still lost.
Oakland scored 3 runs without recording a single hit. Over his 5 innings of work, Gullett walked 7 batters - and three of them would end up scoring on three different errors committed by the Cincinnati defense. Most pitchers throwing a no-hitter in a World Series game would enjoy stellar defense. Not Gullett.
Meanwhile, Cincinnati got 10 hits off Ken Holtzman, but only scored 2 runs.
Both of Cincinnati's runs were unearned - Holtzman's ERA for the game was 0.00. Gullett's was 1.80. Neither starting pitcher allowed an earned run. In a game where one team got ten hits and the other team got zero, the team with zero hits won.
Now imagine, dear reader, just how terrible a team's defense would have to be to lose a no-hitter on walks, errors, and boneheaded defensive plays. And imagine just how terrible a team's offense would have to be to blow so many different opportunities to get baserunners across the plate, and come away with 10 hits and 0 earned runs.
The car crash of these terrible performances with stellar pitching is our Timeline 31.
Just to recap: * The team that won 3-2 had zero hits * The team that had 10 hits also had zero earned runs, and lost the game * The losing pitcher helped throw a combined no-hitter in the World Series, and it did not matter
This is the game that proves the multiverse has a sense of humor, and that humor is cruelty, and that cruelty has a name, and that name is "Don Gullett (L)".
In the bottom of the sixth, trailing 2-3, Gullett faced the heart of Oakland's order and needed exactly nine pitches to retire all three.
Matty Alou fouled off a pitch, swung through the next, and swung through the third. Three pitches, strikeout. Joe Rudi swung through a strike, took a ball, then rolled a groundball to the mound — Gullett fielded it himself, threw to first, three pitches, out. Sal Bando fouled the first pitch back, watched a called strike paint the corner, then stood frozen as a third strike caught the inside edge. Three pitches, strikeout looking.
Nine pitches. Three batters. Three outs. No baserunners. No foul balls hit into play. One ball — to Rudi, who put the next pitch on the ground so weakly that Gullett barely had to move his feet. Had that single ball been a strike, and had Rudi swung through it instead of grounding out, this would have been an immaculate inning — one of the rarest feats in baseball, achieved only 114 times in the history of the major leagues through 2024. Gullett missed it by one pitch.
He left the game after that inning. Cincinnati trailed 3-2. They would not tie the game until the ninth, would not win until the fifteenth. Clay Carroll, who entered in the twelfth, got the win. Gullett got nothing — not the decision, not the record, not the recognition. Just nine pitches in an empty half-inning that no one will remember unless they read this page.
But it happened. In thirty-five simulated timelines, across hundreds of half-innings pitched, Don Gullett's most perfect moment lasted nine pitches in the sixth inning of a game that still had nine innings left to play.
Don Gullett's career across 35 timelines: 7-14. 249 innings pitched. 2.96 ERA.
Ken Holtzman's career across 35 timelines: 14-7. 265 innings pitched. 2.68 ERA.
Don Gullett is the tragic figure of the Infinite Cincinnati multiverse. A stellar pitcher consistently pitching the game of his life in the biggest spot in his career, in a universe that had already decided he was going to lose.