Since 1916, many pitchers have accomplished a certain game feat once in a career, several have done it twice, and one even did it three times. But, only these three moundsmen have managed that feat twice in the same season.
Dennis Martinez
Claude Willoughby
Dizzy Dean
What is this most unusual of repeat performances?
Congratulations to John Autin! He correctly identified that these are the only pitchers to start two games in the same season in which an opposing player hit for the cycle. More after the jump.
These are the games, Willoughby pitching for the Phils, Dean for the Cards and Martinez for the Os (I don’t attribute any significance to the fact that two thirds of these batters are HOFers.)
| Rk | Player | Date | Tm | Opp | Rslt | PA | AB | 1B | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HBP | BOP | Pos Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hack Wilson | 1930-06-23 | CHC | PHI | W 21-8 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | CF |
| 2 | Chick Hafey | 1930-08-21 | STL | PHI | W 16-6 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | LF |
| 3 | Chuck Klein | 1933-05-26 | PHI | STL | L 4-5 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | RF |
| 4 | Babe Herman | 1933-09-30 | CHC | STL | W 12-2 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | RF |
| 5 | George Brett | 1979-05-28 | KCR | BAL | W 5-4 | 8 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3B |
| 6 | Bob Watson | 1979-09-15 | BOS | BAL | W 10-2 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 1B |
Batters have hit for the cycle 241 times since 1916, led by Babe Herman and Bob Meusel with three games each. Herman in 1931 and Aaron Hill in 2012 are the only batters with two cycle games in the same season (Hill’s two were only 11 days apart). Nineteen other players have two cycles in a career, led by Joe DiMaggio, the only player with 5 hits (and two HR) in both games.
On the pitching side, George Earnshaw has been the starter for 3 cycle games by 3 different HOFers, in 1932, 1933 and 1934. In addition to the three players in the quiz, twelve other pitchers have started two games, in different seasons, with an opponent hitting for the cycle. Some other curiosities:
- There have been four pitchers (Bill Trotter 1939, Jose Mercedes 2000, Rocky Biddle 2004, Sun-Woo Kim 2004) who started a cycle game and, in the same season, relieved a teammate who started another cycle game (Biddle and Kim were teammates for the Expos in their final season in Montreal).
- Matt Harrison was on the mound for both of Adrian Beltre‘s cycles, once as the opposing pitcher and once as Beltre’s teammate.
- Beltre’s first cycle came on Sep 1, 2008, one of two dates with cycles in two different games (Stephen Drew had the other for Arizona in 2008). The other date was almost 88 years earlier, on Sep 17, 1920, when George Burns and Bobby Veach helped the Giants and Tigers to extra-inning walk-off wins.
- There were 8 cycle games in 2009, tied with 1933 for the most in any season (and also tied with the cycle-starved 1951-60 decade).
- Included in the 2009 cycles were three in a 5-day period in April and another three in a 13-day period in August.
- In 1933, four of the eight cycles came in a 16-day period in August, including 3 in succession by the Athletics against 3 different opponents. The fourth was by the Indians against the Athletics, the only time two cycles have occurred in the same series.
- Earlier in 1933 the Cardinals and Phillies had cycles against each other in two different series in May. Frank Pearce took the loss for the Phillies in both games, one of them (above) won by Dizzy Dean in a 14-inning complete game.
- 82% of cycles have come from batters in top 5 spots in the order.
- 23 cycles (9.5%) have come from 23 different switch-hitters, but 16 of those 23 have been center-fielders and shortstops.
Could this be answered in a single P-I search?
No. Not from a single search.
Check out that 1930 season that Willoughby had. Three game scores below 10!
1930 is the right season for Willoughby. But, it’s not about game scores.
That 1930 season is fascinating. If you look at the league leaders, only two pitchers with an ERA of under 3, the league RPG were AL 5.41 and NL 5.68. The Phillies staff gave up 7.69 RPG. Willoughby himself gave up 147 Runs in 153 innings. A study of this might be interesting: do harsh conditions exacerbate the differences between pitchers.
Count me as one of the people who thinks eras of high offense do produce more variability among pitcher performance.
Maddux, Pedro, RJ, and Clemens put up peak numbers, at least rate-wise, as great as any in the history of baseball. Did pitching in the steroid era make it easier for them to appear more above-average than their counterparts?
Is the opposite true in the ’60s, an era of low offense? Was it harder for Koufax, Gibson, and Marichal to put up insanely high ERA+ numbers?
Interesting questions. No clear right-and-wrong answers.
I agree with this! Runs are not linear and the accounting is a little off. Runs per game cannot be linearly corrected for. Fewer runs per game mean the importance of a run is higher. Places like Chavez Ravine and Coors field distort stats because they give disproportionate opportunities for success.
Koufax gets hit the hardest by this. His peak is not seen well. Pitching a shutout at home for him was easier than pitching a shutout in a hitter friendly park to be sure but the weighting on that distorts how much more important preventing every single run was at dodger stadium.
In statistical terms, the compensation needs compensation. Damping. It’s not linear. Linear approximations break down at the extreme ends. It’s why I don’t think Walker is penalized enough for Coors and why I think Koufax was better than his ERA+ and pitching WAR indicate.
The sabermetric criticisms I have read of b-ref’s ERA+ are that because it is not linear, it gives guys like Koufax too much credit, and guys like Pedro Martinez not enough credit.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/moving-beyond-era/
http://www.hardballtimes.com/tht-live/and-sandy-koufax/
http://skykalkman.tumblr.com/post/53519184478/my-twitter-rant-about-era-storified
birtelcom, great links! I can’t read the third one for some reason.
I basically agree, but I think they’re both missing the bigger picture. Probably not what you expected? ERA+ does over-compensate. Koufax’s ERA+ is higher than it would be if you compensated. I agree with that point. ERA+ though is a measure of how many earned runs you were better or worse than a league average pitcher pitching in the same ballpark. What it DOESN’T do is compensate for the value of the run prevention towards a W.
That’s WAA, or if you want to put in some reference level which I think is a great idea WAR. WAA’s easier to talk about though as a measure.
The point is, which pitcher is more valuable from a WAA perspective, leaving replacement out of it:
200 IP, ERA+ 130, league average r/g: 5.5
200 IP, ERA+ 130, league average r/g: 4.5
The answer is the second one by a substantial margin. He will produce more value.
The compensation of ERA compared to league, which I applaud Sal Baxamusa for doing (I mean real probability analysis even from the saber metrics community is too scarce), should be on a curve and indeed would give lower scores in lower run scoring environments and higher scores in higher run scoring environments. It’s only more pronounced than ERA+ in extreme environments. I agree with this. My point though is about the value of runs in those environments. It’s a little different issue.
Is it a purely pitching feat?
No. Also something about what the opposition does.
Did the pitchers in question win any of the games?
The pitchers were a collective 1-4 with a ND.
Dean had the win.
I’m sensing that Hack Wilson, Chick Hafey, Chuck Klein, Babe Herman, George Brett and Bob Watson could be involved.
But if so, I’m surprised there are just 3 pitchers to do that twice in a season.
Or I could be way off.
You are bang on, John.
Good sleuthing.
Would you mind explaining how you figured that out?
Voomo, are you asking Doug, or me?
I got a list of cycle games from P-I showing just the two teams and the date (using Batting Game Finder, Find Number of Players Matching Criteria in a Game).
Pop that into a spreadsheet, create a pivot table based on season and opponent. Then just check the times one team had two cycles hit against them in the same season (not very many) and check those games. That will find the pitchers who did it twice in the same season (unless a pitcher changed teams mid-season and had one for each team; but that’s never happened).
Doug: How did you ascertain “but that’s never happened” without searching all the games for a year with more than one occurrence of a cycle?
The PI goes back to 1914. My reference book shows that Fred Clarke hit for the cycle in 1901 and 1903.
I did check all 241. Took about 75 minutes.
Voomo, if you’re asking me, here’s how I got it: Doug had said that 1930 was the year for Willoughby, so it was probably not going to be a *good* “feat” by the pitcher. And in checking his game log for 1930, I couldn’t find anything good that he’d done twice. So I focused on bad performances.
But as badly as Willoughby pitched that year, I still couldn’t find any unusual repeats in his pitching lines. I looked at his highs in runs, hits, walks, HRs, etc., and ran a few P-I game searches. I noticed 2 games where he left without getting an out, and thought that might be something, but there are several who’ve made 2 such starts in a year (and Johnny Sain had 3 in 1946, when he won 20). Plus, I’d overlooked that one of those by Willoughby was in relief. So, eventually, I gave up on pitching lines.
Then I asked if it was purely a pitching feat, and Doug said no, it was also about something the opposition did. For a while, that just seemed cryptic. But since I’d pretty much ruled out anything notable in Willoughby’s pitching lines, that meant it was probably not going to be something the opposition did *as a team*, but something that one or more individuals did.
I ran some 1930 batter game searches — most RBI, runs, etc. — but didn’t find 2 standouts against the Phillies. Then I asked for another clue: did the pitchers win any of the games? When Doug said they went 1-4, I realized it could be a notable batter performance that didn’t have tremendous game impact. And that’s the first time I thought of a cycle. Then it was just a matter of searching for cycles, and my hunch was confirmed.
I don’t know how Doug ascertained that only these 3 guys had done it. I guess you could find all cases of a team giving up 2 cycles in a year, cross-check with a list of pitchers giving up HR-3B-2B-1B twice in a year, and then manually check all the matches.
It was simpler than that.
Just do the first part (teams that gave up two cycle in a season), and just look at the games (there aren’t a lot). No cross-checking required.
I can’t see how you can say the pitchers “accomplished” this.