April 11, 2023: Luis Arráez becomes first Marlin to hit for the cycle

The Minnesota Twins signed Venezuelan Luis Arráez as an amateur free agent at age 16 in 2013. In seven minor-league seasons, he posted a .331 batting average. He continued to hit for average in the majors, batting .334 as a rookie in 2019 and winning the American League batting crown with a .316 mark in 2022.

Arráez was traded to the Miami Marlins for pitcher Pablo López and two minor leaguers in the 2022-23 offseason, and his bat stayed hot even with the change of leagues. He had hit safely in his final nine games as a Twin, and he extended his streak by five games at the beginning of the 2023 season. Through 11 games with Miami, Arráez had 18 hits in 36 at-bats. He was not known as a home-run hitter hitter: 16 of those safeties were singles.1 While their new second baseman shined with the bat, however, the Marlins lost seven of those games.2

On April 11, two days after Arráez’s 26th birthday, the Marlins and Philadelphia Phillies played the second game of a three-game series before a Tuesday night crowd of 43,444 at Citizens Bank Park. It happened to be “Dollar Dog Night” at the ballpark. More than hits would rain on the field of play, and Arráez finished the night with the first cycle in the Marlins’ 31-season history.

Aaron Nola was making his third start of the season (first at home) for Philadelphia, in search of his first win of the year. Despite an 11-13 record in 2022, Nola had finished fourth in the National League’s Cy Young Award voting; the Phillies won the NL pennant before losing the World Series to the Houston Astros. After two starts in 2023, he brought a 7.45 ERA with him to the mound.

Miami lefty Jesús Luzardo was also making his third start of the season. He had posted two consecutive losing seasons, but now, in 2023, he entered the game with an 0.71 ERA, and he was pitching for his second victory.3

After Nola struck out both Jazz Chisholm and Garrett Cooper to begin the game, Arráez banged out a double, one-hopping it off the wall in right-center field. Jorge Soler flied out, stranding Arráez at second.

Miami’s Jon Berti hit a one-out home run to deep center in the top of the third for a 1-0 lead. Both pitchers stranded opposing baserunners through the fifth (the Marlins had left three men on base to this point, the Phillies four), and Miami clung to its slim lead.

After lining out to center in the third inning, Arráez came to the plate with one out and the bases empty in the sixth. He delivered a liner into the right-field corner for a triple4 and scored on Soler’s double to left field.

Nola struck out Bryan De La Cruz, but then the next three Miami hitters – Yuli Gurriel, Jean Segura, and Nick Fortes – each singled with two outs, bringing in two more runs. Phillies manager Rob Thomson made a pitching change, calling on recently acquired southpaw Gregory Soto.5 Soto walked Berti to load the bases but retired Chisholm on a fielder’s choice. The Marlins had batted around and now led, 4-0.

The Phillies countered with three runs in the home half of the sixth. Designated hitter Kyle Schwarber – whose 46 homers in 2022 had paced the NL – led off with a home run just inside the right-field foul pole, his third homer of the young season.

Luzardo retired two of the next four batters but hit Edmundo Sosa to load the bases. That brought up the hottest batter on the Phillies team, Bryson Stott. The 25-year-old second baseman came into the game batting .422, and he had already extended his hitting streak to 11 games with a single in the fifth.6

With a full count, Stott lined another single to left, driving in two runs, but he then took a wide turn at first, before putting on the brakes. Miami left fielder De La Cruz threw to third baseman Segura, who then fired across the diamond to first baseman Gurriel, who tagged out Stott for the final out of the inning. Still, the Marlins’ lead was down to 4-3.

Right-hander Connor Brogdon came on to pitch the seventh for Philadelphia, and after striking out Cooper, Brogdon then faced the left-handed-batting Arráez, who blasted the 1-and-1 pitch into the opposite-field stands for his first homer of the season.

In four at-bats, Arráez now had a double, triple, and home run. He was a single from the cycle, and in 2022, his 133 singles had ranked him second in the majors.7

Andrew Bellatti relieved Brogdon to start the eighth, becoming the fourth Philadelphia pitcher. This was his seventh appearance of the season, and he had not allowed a run in any of his previous outings. But Gurriel led off with a double and Berti singled to center two outs later, driving Gurriel home. Chisholm tripled into the right-center gap, plating Berti, and Jesús Sánchez walked, giving Arráez his chance for history.

On a 2-and-1 count, Arráez lofted a Bellatti changeup into left field for his cycle-completing single. As Chisholm scored, Arráez carried his bat halfway to first base, and the Philadelphia crowd both cheered and booed. Some fans were cheering Arráez’s accomplishment, perhaps since they had witnessed one of baseball’s rare events. Other fans were not pleased with the Phillies’ performance, and “hot dogs wrapped in aluminum foil showered down from the upper decks, some of them landing on the right-field grass.”8

The Phillies made the final score closer with a ninth-inning run. Brandon Marsh singled and scored on J.T. Realmuto’s two-out double. But it was too little, too late. Nick Castellanos struck out to end the game. Miami had won, 8-4. The Marlins had outhit the Phillies, 14 to 11, but the run total was twice as much.

Before Arráez’s big night, the Marlins were the only major-league franchise without a cycle, dating to their debut game on April 5, 1993. There had been 112 instances of batters hitting for the cycle since then, all by the other 29 teams in the AL and NL, including three against the Marlins.9 Their cycle drought ended in the 4,700th regular-season game in franchise history.10

Arráez’s cycle was the 17th in NL or AL history by a batter within the first 12 games of the season.11 Four other players also hit for the cycle in 2023: Baltimore’s Cedric Mullins (May 12), Philadelphia’s J.T. Realmuto (June 12), Cincinnati’s Elly De La Cruz (June 23), and Houston’s José Altuve (August 28). Arráez became the sixth Venezuela-born player to hit for the cycle.12

Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald described Arráez as the Marlins’ “hitting maestro.”13 His 4-for-5 performance raised his league-leading batting average to .537. His OPS shot up to 1.327. Despite going hitless in two previous games this season, Arráez now had 22 hits in the early part of the season.

Arráez finished 2023 with 203 hits, and for the second consecutive season he led his league in batting, posting a .354 mark with the Marlins. His 10 home runs were a career high, and his 30 doubles were one short of his personal best. He became the third player in NL or AL history to win batting titles in both leagues,14 and the first to do it in back-to-back seasons.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Lawrence DeFilippo and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks Larry for his insights and suggestions.

Photo credit: Luis Arráez, Trading Card Database.

Sources  

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, MLB.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI202304110.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2023/B04110PHI2023.htm

For video of the game’s highlights, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLfApIOEHiI.

Notes

1 Arráez seems to have built his extra-base power as his major-league career progressed. In 2021 he was in the AL’s Top Ten in triples. In both 2022 and 2023, he hit at least 30 doubles. Finally, in 2023, he reached double-digits in home runs.

2 Five of those early April losses were to the New York Mets, as scheduling had the Marlins and Mets play seven of their first 10 games against each other.

3 Luzardo finished the 2023 season with a 10-10 record.

4 According to sportswriter Jordan McPherson, Arráez broke his bat on the swing. See Jordan McPherson, “‘Pretty special’: Arráez hits first cycle in Marlins history,” Miami Herald, April 13, 2023: 13A, 16A.

5 On January 7, 2023, the Phillies traded Nick Maton, Donny Sands, and Matt Vierling to the Detroit Tigers for Soto and Kody Clemens.

6 Stott’s streak reached 17 games, the most by a Phillies player since Odubel Herrera hit in 21 straight games from July 28 to September 8, 2017.

7 Amed Rosario of the Cleveland Indians led the majors with 134 singles.

8 Coffey.

9 From May 25, 1882, when Buffalo’s Curry Foley became the first player to hit for the cycle, until the end of the 1992 season, there had been 227 instances of a major leaguer hitting for the cycle. Through the end of the 2022 season, there were 339 cycles. (Nolan Arenado’s accomplishment on July 1, 2022, was the last.) That means that there were 112 cycles in that 30-year stretch. The cycles achieved against Marlins pitching were by Todd Helton (Colorado Rockies, June 19, 1999), Cody Bellinger (Los Angeles Dodgers, July 15, 2017), and Freddie Freeman (Atlanta Braves, August 18, 2021).

10 The cycle took place in the 12th game of the Marlins’ 31st season.

11 McPherson.

12 The other Venezuela-born players to have hit for the cycle are César Tovar (Minnesota Twins, September 19, 1972), Carlos Guillén (Detroit Tigers, August 1, 2006), Carlos González (Colorado Rockies, July 31, 2010), Pablo Sandoval (San Francisco Giants, September 15, 2011), and Eduardo Escobar (New York Mets, June 6, 2022).

13 McPherson.

14 Ed Delahanty won the NL batting title in 1899 and the AL batting title in 1902. DJ LeMahieu won the NL batting title in 2016 and the AL batting title in 2020.