Bullinger Defined

This is your biggest fantasy nightmare.

You have two starting pitchers starting in the same game for the Cubs and the Nationals one day. You’re watching something on ESPN that night and you see the following scrawl across the bottom of the screen:

Chi 14, Wash 8.

There is just no getting around it. You are going to feel pain.

Joe Posnanski wrote a great blog item (see it here) this week comparing Halliday’s no hitter and Lincecum’s 14 strikeout game. As a point of reference, he used a formula called Game Scores developed by Bill James. Game scores is a way of evaluating the quality of a pitching performance, and is scored, fairly simply as follows:

• Start with 50 points.


• Add one point for each out.
• Add two points for each inning completed after Inning 4.
• Add one point for each strikeout.
• Subtract two points for each hit.
• Subtract four points for each earned run.
• Subtract 2 points for each unearned run.
• Subtract 1 point for each walk.

Pretty simple. An average game is 50. A truly great game, virtually perfection, is 100. Lincecum’s game scored 96, the 4th highest ever in post season play. Halliday’s no hitter scored 94, an awesome score, but lower because he did not strike out as many batters. Read Joe’s piece to understand and see some of the great outings of all time.

Meanwhile, I want to go the other way. I immediately thought about the scores of those really nightmarish games. I experienced the above nightmare once, and I have never forgotten it. I’ve written about it. And I’ve named it.

In 1997 two of my starting pitchers faced each other. That was Jim Bullinger for the then Montreal Expos against Steve Traschel for the Cubs. The Cubs won 14-8. Here are their pitching lines:

• Bullinger – 3.2 IP, 9 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 2 K
• Traschel – 5 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 3 BB, 9 K

Traschel just lasted long enough to get the win.

Jim Bullinger’s game score was 11. Steve Traschel’s game score was 29.

Off and on we’ve awarded Bullingers, but the award process was subjective. I aim to make it objective and calculable.

From here on, a Bullinger is defined as a game score for a starting pitcher of 11 or less.

May your fantasy team be blessed with many Bullingers.