In this morning's post, I talked a little bit about players in their MLB debuts hitting for the cycle (which has never been done). This led me to researching about Blue Jays hitting for the cycle. I remember back in 2001 when Jeff Frye did it (interestingly enough, future Blue Jay Frank Catalanotto was on the Rangers when Frye hit for the cycle against them, and we'll talk a little more about him later), so I knew it had at least been done before, but I was interested in digging a little deeper. This shows the number of times a Jay has hit for the cycle, which has happened twice, with Frye and Kelly Gruber back in 1989.
Considering that there have been 111 cycles since 1977 (the year the Jays joined the MLB), you would think that they would have hit more than 2 (the average major league team hit 3.7 cycles over that span). Now obviously some parks are easier to hit cycles in than others (I always think of Fenway Park, with the Green Monster for home runs and doubles and the "triangle" out in right-center field for triples), but Skydome (well the Rogers Center) does seem like it's a fairly hitter-friendly park (in the early 2000s, it's "Park Factor" was over 100 consistently, which means it favored hitters, while in the last couple of years it has been below 100 a couple of times). So I wondered, how close have the Jays been to hitting cycles over the years?
The first, and most obvious thing to look at, is the number of times a Jays hitter has been only a triple away from the cycle. It happened on Saturday, in JP Arencibia's debut (which I talked about earlier today), when he had a single, a double, and two home runs (Edwin Encarnacion also fell just a triple short of the cycle on Saturday). This actually happens fairly frequently, probably even more often than you would think, as there have actually been 257 occasions where a Jays hitter has fallen just a triple short of the cycle, including 11 times already this year. On average, a Jays hitter has fallen short of the cycle by a triple 7.56 times per year.
Since triples are so rare, it is to be expected that most of the time a player misses a cycle will be because of the triple. The next most difficult hit to get is the home run, and this shows that Blue Jays hitters have missed the cycle by a home run 73 times (2.15 times per year). It last happened on June 16, when Fred Lewis had 4 hits, including two singles, a double, and a triple, but couldn't quite complete the cycle. Whereas players usually miss the triple because they aren't quite fast enough, players who miss by a home run are players who aren't power hitters.
On the contrary, those who miss the cycle by only a double are usually players who just don't get enough at-bats or just can't quite stretch a single into a double, especially if they end up with 4 hits or more. This shows that 23 Blue Jays over the years (0.68 per year) have missed the cycle by just a double. In every case but one (Ed Sprague with two home runs in 1996), players end up with either 3 hits: single, triple, home run, or 4 hits: 2 singles, triple, home run.
The most painful non-cycle occurs when a player hits a double, triple, and home run, but misses by just a single. These are rare occurrences, and as this shows, it has only happened 13 times in Blue Jays history. In all 13 games, the player only ended up with 3 hits, all for extra bases. The last time it happened was to Frank Catalanotto in 2005, who actually missed the cycle by a single in 2005, a triple twice in 2003, and a home run in 2003 and 2004. The most recent player who has missed the cycle by every single type of hit has been Vernon Wells, who missed it by a single in 2003, a double in 2002, a triple in 2002, four times in 2003, and once in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010, and a home run twice in 2002, and once in 2003 and 2009.
So in total there have been 368 games in Jays history (an average of 10.82 a year) where a player was one hit away from the cycle, yet only twice did the player actually achieve the cycle - only 0.54% of the time! It seems as though the Jays franchise is due for another cycle soon, and already this year there have been 12 instances where a player is one hit shy of the cycle, which is the highest amount since 2006, when there were 16 instances where a player was one hit away from the cycle (this year is on pace for 18, which would be the highest total since 2002).
I believe that we will see another cycle for the Jays by the end of 2011. The way that they have been hitting the ball the last couple of years, and especially this year, I think that it may happen before the end of this year but more likely sometime next year. They have been extremely unlucky so far in their quest for cycles (though not as unlucky as the Marlins and Padres!), and at some point the law of averages must balance out.
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