Natural cycle

In baseball, hitting for the cycle is the accomplishment of one batter hitting a single, a double, a triple, and a home run in the same game. Collecting the hits in that order is known as a "natural cycle". Cycles are rare in Major League Baseball (MLB), and have occurred only 309 times since the first by Curry Foley in 1882. The most recent example was accomplished by Wil Myers of the San Diego Padres on April 10, 2017, against the Colorado Rockies. To this day, the Miami Marlins are the only MLB franchise who have never had a player perform the feat.

The cycle is about as uncommon as a no-hitter (288 occurrences in MLB history); it has been called "one of the rarest" and "most difficult feats" in baseball. Based on 2009 offensive levels, the probability of an average MLB player hitting for a cycle against an average team in a game is approximately 0.00590%; this corresponds to about 2.5 cycles in a 162-game season with 30 teams.

In other baseball leagues, the cycle is achieved less frequently. Through September 4, 2008, 63 players in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the top-level baseball organization in Japan, have hit for the cycle, the most recent being Rainel Rosario. Two players have hit for the cycle on the same day once in NPB history; this has occurred twice in MLB history. One NPB player has also hit for the cycle in an NPB All-Star game. No player has ever hit for the cycle in the MLB All-Star Game or the postseason.

Pursuant to Major League Baseball (MLB) Rule 6.09(a), "[the] batter becomes a runner when he hits a fair ball". The single is the most common type of hit in baseball: for example, there were 25,838 singles hit during the 1988 MLB season, compared to 6,386 doubles, 840 triples, or 3,180 home runs. The MLB leader in singles is Pete Rose, who is also the league's all-time hit leader. The single-season leader in singles is Ichiro Suzuki, who broke Willie Keeler's 106-year-old record in 2004 by notching 225, 19 more than the previous record. None of the top five players in singles (Rose, Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins, Cap Anson, and Keeler) in MLB history have hit for the cycle; of those five, only Rose had more than 150 home runs, and two (Collins and Keeler), who both played during the dead-ball era, had fewer than 50, lessening the probability of their completing the cycle.

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