Interesting Occurrences

So the games that went on during Wednesday and earlier this week had some pretty interesting things that happened, and some good, some crazy and some not so good.

One of these such things that is probably the most broadly covered is Mike Trout hitting for the cycle, now hitting for the cycle, for those who don't know, involves getting on base by every hit scenario that being hit a single, double, triple and a home run all in the same game. Sounds difficult right? Well it is, however probably not as hard as you may think, so lets look at some other rare occurrences in baseball and compare how many times they've happened. Ok so the cycle has been hit for a total of 294 times since the first one was hit by Curry Foley in 1882, now if you look back at all of the players who have hit for the cycle, it seems there are about 3-4 cycles on average hit every year, though some years have had that number inflated (ie. 2009 when it was hit 8 times). Now some other rare events in baseball, the perfect game, stealing home plate, pitching and hitting triple crowns, a no hitter and for good measure let's include the win of a Cy Young and MVP in the same year.

Alright first off the perfect game, now to date this feat has only been achieved 23 times, and this is over the entirety of baseballs existence, and makes it fairly incomparable to hitting for the cycle, though the number of times this occurs seems to be increasing at a slow pace as we saw 3 perfect games pitched in 2012 by Phillip Humber, Matt Cain and Felix Hernandez.

Next we have stealing home, now this one isn't something you see very often and in all honesty of all the baseball games I've seen I can probable count the times I've seen it happen on my hands. But despite what I believe and what you might this actually happens A LOT more often than you think. As of now there doesn't seem to be a record of all the players who did but I can tell you there is a list of 38 players who have stolen home a minimum of 10 times over their careers, Ty Cobb sits atop that list with 54 steals of home. So again this can't be compared to hitting for the cycle because oddly enough, it happens to often.

The Triple Crown, now this thing is totted by the old guard of baseball statistics as the end all be all for talented hitters and pitchers, now I think thats a load of shit to some extent because there are several factors that the stats it uses doesn't take into account but I'll save that for another post. Now the hitters triple crown doesn't go anywhere near that, just like the perfect game, it's been achieved only 16 times and before Miguel Cabrera won it last year (barely though) it hadn't been won for 45 years, so thats a wash.  The pitching triple crown falls into a similar area being won 38 times since it's inception, however it hasn't been as absent from baseball as the hitters triple crown has been. So again no real comparison to hitting for the cycle.

Ok next is winning the Cy Young and MVP in the same year, which we already saw happen recently when Verlander won them both in 2011. Ok so first thing we have to take note of is that the Cy Young didn't come into existence until 1956, which ironically was the first time someone won both the Cy Young and MVP, that player being Don Newcombe. Over the years it happened a total of 9 times, making it even more rare than the perfect game, a bit shocking but plenty of baseball writers view pitchers as having a less impactful job on the team when compared to a big power hitter on the team, though I disagree with this. Again way to far off to compare to hitting for the cycle

Now the last, pitching a no-hitter. Well it seems we've got a winner here, since the start of baseball a total of 279 no hitters have been thrown by pitchers, though over the last decade or so there has been a drastic increase in no hitters being thrown every year. Back in the 70's and 80's you'd be lucky to see one or potentially 2 each year, but in 2012 we had 8 thrown and 6 previously in 2010. The other part that is comparable with hitting for the cycle is the number of times a player achieves this in their career, if we look at all the no hitters thrown, elite level pitchers throw only 2-3 over the course of their career, which seems to be in line with how many times elite level hitters go hit for the cycle in their career as well.

So we have some context now for how rare a player hitting for the cycle is but theres one additional thing that you should take away from what Mike Trout accomplished, and that is that he becomes the youngest player in AL history to hit for the cycle. It's just another huge thing that Mike Trout can tick onto his baseball resume, and it seems him and Bryce Harper are going to represent a ridiculous surge of young players in the MLB.

-Eric