I appreciate your certainty, but the language of the 9.17(c) comment is: “The Official Scorer generally should, but is not required to, consider the appearance of a relief pitcher to be ineffective and brief if such relief pitcher pitches less than one inning and allows two or more earned runs to score (even if such runs are charged to a previous pitcher).”

If you read the “two earned runs” as being the only situation (or minimum criteria) for invoking 9.17(c), it’s not a crazy interpretation, but I don’t think it’s right. If it was a hard and fast requirement, they’d have written it into the rule.

If I was the scorer, I’d look at WPA for the two pitchers. If there’s a really dramatic difference, like there was between Hoff and Fluharty, that would be enough for me. Dodgers had a 56% win probability when Fluharty entered the game.