List of Nippon Professional Baseball players to hit for the cycle

In baseball, completing the cycle is the accomplishment of hitting a single, a double, a triple, and a home run in the same game.^[1] Collecting the hits in that order is known as a "natural cycle".^[2] The feat is rare in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), occurring 66 times since Fumio Fujimura's first cycle during the single league era in 1948. In terms of frequency, the cycle is roughly as common as a no-hitter (84 occurrences in NPB history); Baseball Digest calls it "one of the rarest feats in baseball".^[3] Of the 12 current NPB teams, only the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles have never had at least one player hit for the cycle.^[4]

The most cycles hit by a player in Nippon Professional Baseball is three, accomplished by Bobby Rose. Playing for the Yokohama BayStars, Rose hit his first cycle on May 2, 1995, the next on April 29, 1997, and his final cycle on June 30, 1999. Other than Rose, only two other NPB players have hit multiple cycles: Fumio Fujimura with the Osaka Tigers and Hiromi Matsunaga with the Hankyu/Orix Braves, both with two. Fujimura is also the only player to have hit a cycle during both the single league era and the current duel league era.^[4]

The 2003 NPB season saw the most cycles hit in a single season—five.^[4] That season also saw the only instance of cycles occurring on the same day: on July 1, hit by Atsunori Inaba of the Yakult Swallows and Arihito Muramatsu of the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks.^[5] The next day, Shinjiro Hiyama became the third player to hit for the cycle in two days.^[6] Conversely, the longest period of time between two players hitting for the cycle was 3 years, 5 months, and 9 days, a drought lasting from Alex Ochoa's cycle in 2004 to Julio Zuleta' in 2007.^[4] No player has ever hit a cycle in both the Central and Pacific Leagues, however after Ochoa hit his cycle with the Chunichi Dragons on April 13, 2004, he became the only player to hit a cycle in both Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball. Eight years earlier, Ochoa accomplished the same feat on July 3, 1996, while playing for MLB's New York Mets.^[7] Yakult Swallows catcher Atsuya Furuta is the only player to hit for the cycle in an NPB All-Star game. However, Furuta's cycle in game 2 of the 1992 series is not considered an official NPB cycle as it occurred during an exhibition game.^[8]

Cycles by player

Cycles by franchise

• Italic text indicates the current name of a current Nippon Professional Baseball franchise; names not in italics indicate either defunct teams or defunct team names.

References

General

• "List of Hall of Famers". The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. http://english.baseball-museum.or.jp/baseball_hallo/list/year.html. Retrieved October 4, 2011. 

Inline citations