Bi-Cycle

by
September 2, 2008

Stephen Drew and Adrian Beltre are pretty similar players. Both are fairly aggressive hitters (Beltre has a career 0.44 BB/K rate, while Drew is at 0.46) with some power (heading into Monday, Beltre’s ISO this year is .186, while Drew’s is .180). Drew plays SS like a 3B while Beltre plays 3B like an SS. They’re not clones, but as far as baseball players go, they aren’t that different.

So, it’s fitting that on the day when Drew became the third player in Diamondbacks history to hit for the cycle, Beltre would follow a few hours later by becoming the fourth player in Mariner history to accomplish the same feat. Both even racked up five hits, though Drew had a pair of doubles while Beltre doubled up on the single.

So, which cycle helped their team more?

Drew racked up .396 worth of WPA, led by his first double of the night. In the seventh inning of a tie game and a runner on, his two base hit set the stage for the D’Backs to take the lead – the leverage index for that play was 2.30, so he gets a nice clutch bonus for coming through when the team certainly needed a run.

Beltre accumulated .387 WPA, and because he just wants to be like Stephen, he also doubled with a runner on first in a tie game in the 7th inning. The score was even identical in both games (6-6), and just like Arizona, the Mariners went on to take the lead on an ensuing single.

It was only the second time in baseball history that two players have ever hit for the cycle on the same day. It hadn’t happened in 88 years, and it will probably be 88 years before we ever see it again. The fact that the two players had such similar games, and are such similar players, just makes it all the more interesting.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.




 

Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

5 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Tom Au
17 years ago

Awesome! Both the event(s) and the article.

0
Chris
17 years ago

Excellent observations regarding not only the parallels between the two games but between the players themselves. For a point of reference, but mostly because I have too much time on my hands, here are their numbers per 650 plate appearances over the last three seasons:

Beltre: 160-596, 39 2B+3B, 26 HR, 46 BB, 105 K, .269/.324/.469
Drew: 160-588, 45 2B+3B, 15 HR, 49 BB, 111 K, .272/.326/.444

From a raw numbers standpoint, they’ve been the exact same hitter with the only difference being that 40% of Beltre’s 65 extra base hits have cleared the wall while only a quarter of Drew’s 60 have done the same.

0
Evan
17 years ago

If we were to break down their hitting by batted ball type, I suspect Beltre would look considerably better than Drew. Beltre’s been getting killing by bad luck on balls in play (until like a week ago).

0
Chris
17 years ago

Over the last three calendar years, per BIS:

Beltre: 19.6 LD%, 40.9 GB%, 39.6 FB%, 11.4 IFFB%, 12.5% HR/FB, 7.0 IFH%, .288 BABIP
Drew: 20.2 LD%, 36.6 GB%, 43.2 FB%, 9.1 IFFB%, 7.3% HR/FB, 6.1 IFH%, .313 BABIP

You’d expect their BABIPs to be almost dead even based on these numbers, but then again, you’d also expect Derek Jeter’s career BABIP to be .335 based on his batted ball profile and not the .362 that it actually is. What holds true for the population doesn’t necessarily hold true for the individual.

0
Paul F.
17 years ago

Ballpark is likely playing a significant role in the difference between their respective BABIPs. Drew plays most of his games in one of the most hitter friendly parks in the league. Beltre plays the majority of his games in a poor hitters park that is particularly difficult on right handed power hitters. Swap ballparks and I would expect Beltre’s totals to significantly exceed Drew’s.

0