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We’re back for our second episode of Willets Pod At The Park, and so far, it’s been a real boon to the New York baseball teams to have us recording at their games. The first time we did this, with Jesse Spector and Thornton McEnery, the Mets throttled the Nationals, 10-0. This time, Jesse took comedian Tony Deyo to the Bronx and not only saw the Yankees beat the Tigers, 13-0, but a seven-run inning.
Gerrit Cole did not wind up pitching a perfect game, of course, nor did Jose Trevino hit for the cycle. Eduardo Escobar did wind up cycling for the Mets three nights later, but obviously he did so with a triple to finish, not going homer-triple-double-single.
Counting up the total number of cycles that went in “reverse order” is beyond our capabilities here, but we can tell you the last time it happened: old friend Rajai Davis, not at that point an old friend, for Cleveland at Toronto on July 2, 2016 — 25 major league cycles ago now. Davis did have a groundout in his third at-bat in that game, so for completeness’ sake, the last recorded player to turn the trick in four straight at-bats (there were four cycles in the 1940s without inning-by-inning data on Stathead) was Arky Vaughan, for the Pirates against the Giants at the Polo Grounds on July 19, 1939. In between, Carlos Gomez, Luke Scott, Jim Fregosi, and Jackie Robinson also did it with outs amid cycles. Given that there are 24 possible orders to tick the boxes on a cycle checklist, you’d maybe expect each outcome around 4.2% of the time. It’s actually happened about 2.3% of the time over the last 80-some years, and that seems well within a margin of error for something so infrequent.
The last player to cycle in order? Another eventual Met, Gary Matthews Jr., for the Rangers in Detroit, September 13, 2006.
Pod At The Park 2: Tony Deyo