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. 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. He allowed 4 earned runs. His ERA for this game was 4.00.
Holtzman won. Gullett lost.
The man who gave up four times as many earned runs walked away with the victory. The man who struck out 8 in 8 innings walked away with the loss. Cincinnati's defense committed 3 errors behind Gullett, letting 4 unearned runs score. Gullett held up his end. His defense did not. The universe charged him for it anyway.
Timeline 13 used the 1942 strategy engine. Timeline 16 used the 1912 engine. Different simulated decade. 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.
Holtzman won. Gullett lost.
Two different strategy engines. Two different simulated eras of baseball philosophy. And the multiverse told the same joke both times: give Gullett a better ERA than Holtzman, then make Gullett lose. The punchline doesn't get less cruel with repetition.
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, across a 162-game season, wins you the Cy Young.
His offense gave him 1 run.
One earned run allowed. One run of support. The margin between victory and defeat was a single error. Gullett did everything you can ask a pitcher to do. He held one of the best offenses in baseball to one earned run over eight innings. His reward was a loss.
Gullett pitched 7 innings. He gave up 3 hits. He struck out 6. He allowed 1 earned run. It was the best pitching performance of the game.
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 Cincinnati pitchers - Borbon, Carroll, Hall, and Sprague - combined to throw 8 more scoreless innings of relief. The game went on for twice as long after Gullett 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.
He was the best pitcher on the field that night, and by the time the game ended, it had completely forgotten about 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. Rollie Fingers came in for Oakland and pitched 2 more, but that's beside the point.
Zero hits allowed. By three Cincinnati pitchers across eight innings. A combined no-hitter.
They lost.
Oakland scored 3 runs without recording a single hit. Not one. Zero. Gullett walked 7 batters in his 5 innings - one of them scored on an error, another came around on another error, and a third scored on yet another error. Cincinnati committed 3 errors behind Gullett's no-hit pitching. Oakland manufactured 3 runs out of walks and defensive catastrophes and nothing else.
Meanwhile, Cincinnati got 10 hits off Ken Holtzman.
Ten hits.
And 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.
Let that settle for a moment.
The team with zero hits won 3-2. The team with ten hits lost. The pitcher who threw a no-hitter lost. The pitcher who gave up ten hits - and none of them mattered because every run that scored off him was unearned - won.
This is the most cosmically unfair game in 35 timelines. 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 the name is the final score.
Oakland 3, Cincinnati 2.
Zero hits to ten.
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.
The difference in ERA is 0.28 runs per nine innings. The difference in record is 7 wins.
Don Gullett is the tragic figure of the Infinite Cincinnati multiverse. A great pitcher in a universe that had already decided he would lose.