Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 30, 2008
The DiMaggio Streak

Devon Young sends this link to an article looking at the likelihood of Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak. One of the interesting conclusions was that Joe wasn't the most likely player to hit for such a streak.

Back when I was with ESPN I did some research along these lines showing that Joe wasn't even the most likely player to get the streak in 1941. The probability of a long streak is related to what I call hit average, hits divided by plate appearances. That's the actual probability of a player getting a hit. The research didn't see the light of day, but Joe was third or fourth in career hit average among active players in 1941.

I believe, at the time, I figured the probability of Joe's streak was about 1 in 10,000.


Posted by David Pinto at 09:29 PM | Streaks | TrackBack (0)
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Back when I had my old site, I took a look at this streak, Williams' 16 straight plate appearances reaching base, and Herschiser's 59 scoreless innings. I think Orel's streak was the least likely, according to my math.

For Dimaggio, I looked at his average ABs per game, and used his BA for that season to figure out his likelihood of getting 1+ hit in any individual game. Since his streak was 56 games, and knowing that the streak would have to start with him getting a hit in a game, I just multiplied the likelihood of getting a hit in a single game to the 55th power. Then you multiply that chance by the number of games he'd be expected to get a hit, in which there's still 55+ games left in the season. Say, 100, to keep it round. So for it to be 1 in 10,000, he'd have to get a hit in about 78% of games. That sounds reasonable.

Posted by: Mike at March 30, 2008 09:48 PM

The coolest thing about that article is that they discovered Joe DiMaggio was by far NOT the likeliest player to hold the record for longest hitting streak in baseball history. What number is he on the list of most likely?....No. 56 of course....wow

Posted by: DbacksBuzz at March 30, 2008 09:51 PM

Joe DiMaggio hit .409 over the course of his hitting streak. Ted Williams hit .406 over the course of the entire season, while simultaneously leading the majors in HR, AND set a major-league record for on-base percentage in a season at .551. Despite reaching base in well over half his plate appearances, Williams was denied the MVP award, with it instead going to DiMaggio, proving that these things were done incorrectly even in 1941.

Posted by: Michael at March 30, 2008 10:19 PM
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