1972 World Series Game 4 @ baseball-reference.com
In four games across 35 timelines, Cincinnati got 10 or more hits and scored 2 runs or fewer.
Ten hits and 1 run. Ten hits and 2 runs. Thirteen hits and 3 runs. Sixteen hits and 4 runs. Cincinnati hits would wander sadly into the outfield and die there. Cincinnati runners might advance from first to second, and spend the rest of the inning languishing. The hits helped give the illusion of an offense, but the goose eggs on the scoreboard told the truth.
The Big Red Machine could hit. What it could not do was score.
The line score:
CIN: 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 - 1 (10 hits)
OAK: 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 2 (5 hits)
Cincinnati outhit Oakland, 10 hits to 5. Cincinnati lost anyway.
Seven different Cincinnati batters recorded hits. Bobby Tolan went 3-for-4. Every starter in the lineup reached base at least once. And it did not matter, because all those hits amounted to 1 lousy run.
Denis Menke went 1-for-4 with a double play. Pete Rose went 1-for-4 with a double play. Joe Morgan went 0-for-4. The baserunners Tolan put on were erased by the batters behind him. The gears on the Machine were not engaging.
The line score:
CIN: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 - 2 (10 hits, 3 errors)
OAK: 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 - 3 (0 hits, 1 error)
This game appears on The Curse of Don Gullett page. It is the no-hitter loss. But it belongs here too, because it is also a story about Cincinnati's offense.
Cincinnati got 10 hits off Ken Holtzman. Ten. And scored 2 runs. Neither of those 2 runs was earned. Holtzman's ERA for the game was 0.00. He gave up 10 hits and his ERA was zero. That is how little Cincinnati's hits mattered.
Meanwhile Oakland won with zero hits. Three runs on walks and errors and nothing else. Oakland's hit-to-run efficiency was infinite - they scored 3 runs on 0 hits. Cincinnati's was 0.20 - one run for every five hits.
In what universe does a team with 10 hits lose to a team with 0 hits? This one.
The line score:
CIN: 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 3 (13 hits)
OAK: 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 2 0 - 4 (11 hits)
Cincinnati got 13 hits. The most hits by any team in any regulation game across 35 timelines. Thirteen hits in nine innings. And they scored 3 runs.
Three runs on 13 hits is a .23 efficiency rate. That means that each hit Cincinnati got would score 0.23 runs - so it took 4 or 5 hits for the team to score even 1 run.
They scored all 3 runs in the first three innings. Then, even as the bats continued to thunder, the runs stopped flowing. The Reds racked up hit after hit, Tolan went 3-for-5, Bench went 3-for-4, even Charlie (Couldn't) Hustle went 2-for-4, but for the entire rest of the game, the scoreboard showed nothing but goose eggs.
Cincinnati led 3-0 after 3 innings. Oakland came back with 2 in the 4th and 2 in the 8th and won 4-3. Ken Holtzman threw a complete game, giving up 13 hits and winning anyway. He gave up more hits than any Oakland pitcher in any regulation game across 35 timelines. And he won.
The line score:
CIN: 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 - 4 (16 hits)
OAK: 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 3 (8 hits)
Sixteen hits. The most hits by any team in any game across all 35 timelines. Sixteen hits in fifteen innings. And Cincinnati barely managed 4 runs.
Tony Perez went 1-for-7 with a WPA of -0.219. Dave Concepcion went 1-for-7 with a WPA of -0.308. Bobby Tolan went 3-for-7 with a WPA of -0.116. Denis Menke went 3-for-7 with a WPA of -0.066. Four starters with negative WPA despite combining for 8 hits. Eight hits and negative value. The hits came in the wrong innings. They came with two outs. They came with nobody on. They came when the game did not need them and disappeared when it did.
Cincinnati won this game. They won it in the 15th inning, one of the three identical marathons. But they won it by the slimmest possible margin - one run - despite out-hitting Oakland 16 to 8. They had twice as many hits, yet they still took the game to extra innings, and only managed to win by one run.
The line score:
CIN: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 - 1 (10 hits)
OAK: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 (5 hits)
Ten hits. Fourteen innings. One run. This is the loneliest run in 35 timelines, and it also belongs here: 10 hits and 1 run is a .10 efficiency rate. 19 baserunners stranded by Cincinnati - at some point, the Cincinnati manager probably walked out to second base between innings to check whether there was a trap door out there swallowing his team's runners.
Pete Rose went 3-for-7. Bobby Tolan went 3-for-7. They combined for 6 hits and scored zero runs between them. Six hits and zero runs. The leadoff and the three-hole hitters doing everything right and producing nothing.
Oakland got 5 hits and scored 0 runs. Their efficiency was also zero. But Oakland did not get 10 hits, and did not strand 19 baserunners. Oakland was shut down. There is a difference between failing to reach base, and reaching base and being left there.
Despite being thoroughly undeserving of the victory, Cincinnati won this game 1-0 on a single run in the 14th inning. Ten hits, nineteen stranded baserunners, and thirteen innings of garbage World Series performance; then, in a flash, Cincinnati scored a run, Oakland couldn't respond, and the game was over.
Across 35 timelines, the two teams were evenly matched: Cincinnati averaged 7.9 hits per game and 2.9 runs per game, while Oakland averaged 7.4 hits per game and 3.0 runs per game. Cincinnati had a hit-to-run efficiency of 0.37, while Oakland's was 0.41. And while those differences (Oakland scoring more runs per game, having higher hit-to-run efficiency) seem small, in a multiverse full of one-run games, those tiny percentages make the difference between winning or losing a 7-game series.
When Oakland hit, those hits turned into runs, in timeline after timeline. (Timeline 12: Oakland gets 3 hits, scores 3 runs. Timeline 13: Oakland gets 5 hits, scores 5 runs. Timeline 18: Oakland gets 5 hits, scores 5 runs.)
When Cincinnati hit, those runners languished on base waiting to be brought home. The Big Red Machine, firing on two cylinders, constantly choked when it mattered most, and only delivered when it mattered least. Home runs never happened with the bases juiced. Hits accumulated as fast as goose eggs on the scoreboard.
In a one-run multiverse, the team that converts is the team that wins.