1972 World Series Game 4 @ baseball-reference.com
On October 19, 1972, Oakland center fielder Angel Mangual stepped to the plate in the bottom of the 9th inning with the score tied 2-2. Blue Moon Odom was on second base. Mangual singled to center. Odom scored. Oakland won 3-2. The Athletics took a 3-1 lead in the World Series. Angel Mangual was the hero.
That's what happened... in reality.
Here's what happened in the multiverse of the 35 simulations of Game 4.
Angel Mangual @ baseball-reference.com
Across 35 simulated timelines of the game he won, Angel Mangual posted a cumulative Win Probability Added of -2.326.
That is the worst of any player on either roster. Not just the worst among Oakland's bench. Not just the worst among the platoon players or the pinch-hitters. The worst of anyone. Forty players suited up across 35 timelines, and Angel Mangual did more damage to his own team's chances of winning than any one of them.
One can imagine Mangual defending himself: "But I hit .250!" That sounds fine. It was not fine. He hit .250 the way a club hits a baby seal. That .250 batting average came with zero home runs, 9 RBIs across 140 at-bats, just 5 walks, and 32 strikeouts. 13 out of 35 games, Angel Mangual went hitless, trudging back to the Oakland dugout after every single plate appearance. The hits that got him to .250 were hits that came when they mattered least - bases empty, no runners, literally nothing that mattered on the line.
That is what WPA measures. Not what you did, but when you did it. Mangual's hits arrived in innings where Oakland was already winning or already losing. His outs arrived in innings where one hit would have changed everything.
The walk-off hero of the real Game 4 became, across 35 alternate versions of it, the most reliable engine of failure on either team.
Joe Rudi @ baseball-reference.com
While Angel Mangual was destroying Oakland's win probability from center field, Joe Rudi was building it from left field.
Rudi's cumulative WPA across 35 timelines: +2.336.
The best of any player on either roster.
Read those numbers again. Mangual: -2.326. Rudi: +2.336. These are huge swings in the team's percent chance of winning - and they practically cancel out, which means everything that Rudi was doing right, to help improve Oakland's chances of win Game 4, was canceled out by something Mangual was doing wrong, to help improve Cincinnati's chances of winning Game 4.
These two batted in the same lineup, and occupied adjacent positions in the outfield. Yet the multiverse assigned them equal and opposite roles.
Angel Mangual: .250, 0 HR, 9 RBI, 5 BB, 32 K. WPA: -2.326.
Joe Rudi: .263, 5 HR, 20 RBI, 16 BB, 8 K. WPA: +2.336.
In reality, you remember Mangual. In the multiverse, you remember Rudi.
This is the game that shows you everything.
Twelve innings. Oakland won 4-3. Both Mangual and Rudi played all twelve. One of them carried the team. The other one nearly buried it.
Angel Mangual: 0-for-5, one strikeout. WPA: -0.327. Every at-bat, he came to the plate with the game close, and every at-bat, he failed. Five times. For twelve innings. In a game his team won by one run, he was the single biggest drag on their chances of winning it.
Joe Rudi: 2-for-5, a home run, a double, an RBI, a walk. WPA: +0.500. Rudi's home run gave Oakland the lead. His double extended a rally. His walk kept an inning alive. He was the reason Oakland won.
The gap between them in this single game: 0.827 points, a stunning divergence in WPA between two teammates. Same team, same outfield, same twelve-inning game. One was a hero, one was a villain.
Oakland won this game - because of Rudi, and despite Mangual.
Joe Rudi's best game across 35 timelines. The single greatest individual performance by any Oakland player in the multiverse.
Rudi went 3-for-5 with a triple and 3 RBI. His WPA: +0.729. That number is enormous. In a one-run game, Rudi was personally responsible for nearly three-quarters of a win's worth of probability. He drove in three of Oakland's four runs. The triple broke the game open.
This is the game Joe Rudi would want you to see. This is the game that proves what WPA already knew - that the quiet left fielder, the man who did not hit the walk-off single in the real Game 4, was the most important player on the team. Not in one single moment, but across 35 timelines, over and over, game after game.
Cincinnati's Don Gullett threw a complete game shutout. Oakland lost 1-0. One run. The narrowest possible margin.
Mangual went 0-for-4. WPA: -0.301. He bled away 30.1 percentage points of win probability in a game decided by a single run. Four at-bats. Four chances to be the man who tied it or won it. Four failures.
Meanwhile Rudi went 0-for-3 with a walk. Also hitless. But his WPA was +0.111. Even without a hit, Rudi added value - his walk came at a moment that mattered, his outs came at moments that didn't. Two outfielders, both hitless, and one of them still managed to help while the other dragged the team down.
The difference between them was never about talent: it was about timing.
Mangual went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. WPA: -0.222. Oakland lost 3-2. Another one-run game. Another game where one hit from Oakland's center fielder might have changed the outcome. Another game where no hit came.
This is Mangual's fourth-worst game by WPA, and another example of failing to hit when it would have mattered most to his team.
The game lasted 15 innings. Oakland scored one run. Cincinnati scored two. The final run came in the top of the 15th.
Mangual went 1-for-5 with a walk and a strikeout. WPA: -0.175. Even in a 15-inning game, even with six plate appearances, even with one hit and a walk, his WPA was still deeply negative. His hit didn't matter. His walk didn't matter. His outs did.
Rudi went 2-for-6 with a home run, an RBI, and a walk. WPA: +0.212. Rudi's home run was Oakland's only run in the entire game. The only run in 15 innings of Oakland baseball came off Joe Rudi's bat.
Same game. Same 15 innings. Same outfield. One of them hit the only home run Oakland managed in the longest game in the multiverse. The other one went 1-for-5 and still made things worse.
Fourteen innings. Zero Oakland runs. The longest shutout in 35 timelines.
Mangual went 0-for-5. WPA: -0.266. Five at-bats across fourteen innings of scoreless baseball. Fourteen innings where one hit - one single, one double, one anything - could have broken the deadlock. The man who won the real Game 4 with a walk-off single had fourteen innings to produce a single clutch hit and could not do it.
Twenty-six consecutive scoreless half-innings. And then Cincinnati scored in the 14th, and Oakland could not answer, and the game was over. One run. The only run. And Mangual had nothing to do with any of it.
In the real Game 4, Angel Mangual's single took two seconds. The ball left his bat, found the outfield grass, and Blue Moon Odom scored from second. That is all it takes. One swing, one hero.
In 35 alternate timelines, he had 140 at-bats to do it again. He could not.
The multiverse does not care about your best moment. It cares about all your moments.
In reality, Angel Mangual hit one single in one at-bat in one inning and became the hero of the 1972 World Series. In 35 alternate timelines, he came to the plate 140 times and became the worst player on either roster.
Joe Rudi did not hit the walk-off single. Joe Rudi was never the hero of anything. But across 35 timelines, he showed up. Again and again. His home runs mattered. His doubles mattered. His walks mattered. He was the most valuable player in the multiverse, and nobody remembers.
Reality gave the moment to Mangual. The multiverse gave everything else to Rudi.