Am I wrong to think that there have been more players hitting for the cycle this year than usual? After Troy Tulowitzki hit for the cycle on Monday, becoming the sixth player in 2009 to do so, I decided to investigate.Turns out six cycles for one year is high - about double the average. Retrosheet.org (a phenomenal resource for baseball research) identifies 289 cycles since Curry Foley hit for the first cycle on record, back in 1882. Feels like yesterday... On average, there are 2.75 cycles per year and the last year without a cycle was 1983. Even the strike-shortened year of 1994 had a cycle (Scott Cooper of the Red Sox, if you're wondering). So six is high, but is it the highest? No.
The record for cycles in one season was set back in 1933 when Hall of Famers Mickey Cochrane and Jimmie Foxx accounted for two of the whopping eight cycles that year. In 1890, there were seven cycles headlined by Oyster Burns, who led the National League with 13 home runs and Farmer Weaver, whose six hits in his cycle game was not matched until Ian Kinsler had six hits as part of his cycle game this year. Also in 2009, Michael Cuddyer and Jason Kubel of the Twins became the first pair of teammates to hit for the cycle in the same season since Montreal's Vlad Guerrero and Brad Wilkerson accomplished the feat in 2003. In addition to this year, 1940, 1976, and 2004 also feature six cycles. With a month and a half of baseball left in 2009, can the record be matched?
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This one even had a go-ahead grand slam. But after Ian Kinsler and the O-Dog, I don't know. It's like, whatever. Just in case he or his friends read this, congrats to Mr. Kubel on becoming part of baseball's elite.
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