Which is more rare, a pitcher throwing a no hitter or a batter hitting for the cycle (a single, double, triple and home run in one game)?
Turns out that throwing a no hitter is slightly rarer than hitting for cycle, at least since a Major League Baseball committee tightened its definition of a no hitter in 1991, knocking 50 of such feats off the record books.
So why have 10 Mets players hit for cycle, yet just one has hurled a no hitter?
.
Players have had 304 hits for cycle while there have been 282 sanctioned no-hitters thrown in Major League history. The 50 no-nos thrown out the the Committee for Statistical Accuracy either involved games not lasting the full nine innings or games in which the pitcher yielded an extra-inning hit after no-hitting through nine.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of these two rare feats:
| No-Hitters |
Hits for Cycle |
|
| Total in history | 282 | 304 |
| Mets accomplishing this |
1 Johan Santana, June 1, 2012 |
10 Jim Hickman Aug. 7, 1963 Tommie Agee July 6, 1970 Mike Phillips June 25, 1976 Keith Hernandez July 4, 1985 Kevin McReynolds Aug. 1, 1989 Alex Ochoa July 3, 1996 John Olerud Sept. 11, 1997 Eric Valent July 29, 2004 Jose Reyes June 21, 2006 Scott Hairston April 27, 2012 |
| Teams without one |
San Diego Padres | San Diego Padres Florida Marlins |
[...] with 291 during baseball history as opposed to 263 no-hitters. (We go into greater detail on our No-hitter vs. hit for cycle page.) The four teams without a no-hitter are the Padres, the Rays, the Colorado Rockies and [...]
Ahh, those poor Padres, the futile Friars. Not just our brothers in no-no-no land (thanks in part to Preston “Pull ‘em” Gomez yanking the ball from Clay Kirby in 1970), but not even the joys of cycles to make up for it.
I’ve seen every cycle since Mike Phillips, from Keith doing it in the 19-inning game at Atlanta to Eric Valent in the last season at Stade Olympique. I not only remember Reyes’s cycle in Philly, but his near miss in Arizona, where he came up for his last AB lacking only a HR for the cycle, banged one off of the center-field wall, zoomed around 3rd with an easy triple and was *jusssst* out going for the inside-the-park HR to cap it off. (I also seem to remember Gary Carter trying to stretch a double into a triple to complete a cycle, but he was a much easier out at 3B.)
One little oddity is that every single once of those cycles (as well as the two near-misses I recall) came on the road. (Carter’s failed attempt was at Chicago, IIRC.) Considering the size of the outfield at Big Shea (and the current Newer, Smaller, but Still Pretty Big Shea [Wilpon sold the name to some corrupt bank? Don't be silly]), that’s fairly Amazin’.
The “number this millennium” stat for no-hitters is incorrect. Matt Cain threw the 22nd PERFECT GAME in MLB history for the Giants, but there have been for more no-hitters (Nolan Ryan threw a ML record SEVEN no-hitters in his career alone, all after the Mets traded him). Twenty-one rookies have thrown no-hitters; the most recent was Clay Buchholz in his second ML start for the Red Sox (9/1/07 vs BAL).
There have been 276 official no-hitters since 1875, which is all in the last thousand years. On that note, referring to occurrences in the last millennium for a league that’s not even 150 years old seems a bit excessive. Don’t really need a thousand year timetable for a something not even a century and a half into its existence.
The number of no-hitters this millennium inadvertently had stopped getting updated. It should be 28, not 22. Whether having that stat on the website is “excessive” is rather silly considering the whole premise of the site is overtly excessive.