Willy Taveras comes up with men on first and third in a tie game, and is hit by a pitch for the second time in the game. That loads the bases and drives Ohka from the game. Since they're in the seventh, if the Astros score here the hit streak likely ends for Taveras. It's two bad he was hit twice, giving him less chances to swing the bat. He's 0 for 2.

Update: The Astros leave the bases loaded and the score tied at three. The Brewers are coming up for the top of the eighth.

Update: The Astros take the lead in the bottom of the 8th as Huff singles in Biggio. With none out, the Astros need to get two more base runners to give Taveras another chance at a hit. Scott gets hit by a pitch to load the bases, so they need just one more player to reach base, and avoid a double play.

Update: Everett singles. The Astros just need to avoid a double play to assure a plate appearance by Taveras.

Update: Ausmus walks, forcing in the Astros 6th run. Now they just need to avoid the triple play!

Update: Jason Lane pinch hits and smacks a grand slam. That's seven straight batters to reach base for the Astros. Now Taveras gets his chance with a 10-3 lead. No pressure. :-)

Update: After getting ahead 2-0, Taveras swings and misses at three straight pitches. That likely ends the streak. Still, anything that reaches 30 is quite impressive, and the home town crowd gives him a nice standing ovation.

Willy Taveras was hit by a pitch his first time up, then flied out in the third in an effort to extend his hitting streak. The Astros lead Milwaukee 1-0 in the third.

Willy Taveras extended his hit streak to 30 games today, leading off the game with a single. It's been a good calendar year for long hit streaks as shortstop Jimmy Rollins, second baseman Chase Utley and centerfielder Willy Taveras all reach 30 games.

Willy Taveras picked up three more hits last night to extend his hit streak to 28 games. He's the last person with a chance of breaking DiMaggio's hit streak record this year. Taveras' batting record, with a low OBA relative to his batting average, makes him the type of player likely to go on a long hit streak. With a low number of walks, Taveras gets more ball put into play, so there's more of a chance that any one plate appearance ends in a hit. DiMaggio was like this relative to Ted Williams. Ted was the better offensive players, but Joe was more likely to get a hit when he came to the plate. That's why Joe holds the hit streak record, but Ted holds the mark for consecutive games reaching base.

Willy Taveras extended his hit streak to 24 games tonight against the Cincinnati Reds. With thirty seven Astros games left, Willy is the last person in Major League Baseball that can break Joe DiMaggio's record this season.

The Astros lead 2-0 on home runs by Berkman and Huff. Andy Pettitte has struck out 10 through 5 1/3 innings as the Astros make a last ditch effort to make a run at the wild card.

Chase Utley just made his third out of the game in the top of the fifth. He'll get one more at bat, possibly two with some help.

Update: They're in the bottom of the 8th with Utley 0 for 4. Chase will lead off the ninth.

Update: Utley falls behind 0-2. He works the count back to 2-2, then strikes out swinging. With the sccore 4-3 Phillies, it's possible if the Mets tie the game that Utley will get another chance.

Update: Ryan Howard hits his 37th home run of the year and the Phillies take a 5-3 win over the Mets. Utley's streak ends at 35, still an impressive number.

Chase Utley singled in the first to extend his hit streak to 35 games. It was a solid line shot to the right of center field. Nine to go to tie Rose and Keeler, 21 for Joltin' Joe.

Chase Utley is 22 games from tying Joe DiMaggio's hit streak, 10 games from tying Rose and Keeler for the NL record. Let's take a look at the odds of him making it.

For the probability of getting a hit, I like to use something I call hit average. It's a very simple calculation, hits divided by total plate appearances. I use this instead of batting average because the calculation is less complicated. Batting average is a conditional probability:

BA = P(Hit|AB)

By Bayes Rule, we can rewrite that:

BA = P(AB|H) * P(H) / P(AB)

But the the probability of an AB given a hit is one, so:

BA = P(H)/P(AB)

If we substitute the formulas for the probability of a hit and an at bat we get:

BA = (Hits/PA)/(AB/PA)

Where PA is plate appearances. This finally yields:

BA = Hits/AB

I bet you never saw anyone derive batting average before. :-)

Instead, I'm just going to use hits/PA as my probability. I'm going to do two calculations, one based on Utley's career numbers, the other based on his season numbers. This will give us a range of probabilities.

Utley's career hit average is .2599, while this season it's .2938. For hit averages, .290 is excellent. That's the probability of Chase getting a hit in a single plate appearance. But games are made up of multiple plate appearances, and he only needs to get a hit in one of those to keep the streak alive. Utley is averaging 4.6 plate appearances per game. So, in a ten game span we expect he'll have six games with five plate appearances and four games with four. We can use the Binomial Distribution to figure out the odds of his getting at least one hit in a four PA and five PA game.

Since each game is an independent event, we can just multiply the game probabilities to get the probability of a particular streak. For example, he needs ten game to tie Rose and Keeler. So based on his 2006 hit average, that would be six games at .824, or .824 ^6 (^ is the sign for an exponent) times four games at .751(.751^4). That works out to a 0.1 chance of tying the NL record, or 10%. Those are pretty good odds. Here are the various odds in a table:

The odds are against him against reaching any of these streaks, but the NL record is certainly doable, especially based on this year's performance.

Chase Utley reaches on a failed fielder's choice in the 8th inning. That doesn't count as a hit, so he's 0 for 5. There's only one out in the 8th, however, and the way the Phillies are hitting tonight, they may very well give Chase another chance. They've answered the Cardinals four runs in the bottom of the seventh with five of their own. A sac fly makes it 13-7 Phillies.

Update: Okay, the box score just changed, and he now has a hit. I thought the scoring was strange. When I first saw the play, I thought he beat out an infield hit. He's at 34.

Chase Utley just struck out leading off the seventh to go 0 for 4 on the night. With the Phillies leading 8-3, the big offense probably means he'll bat once more in the game. The more times you can come to the plate in a game, the more likely you are to get at least one hit.

Chase Utley didn't waste any time tonight, getting a single in the first inning to extend his hit streak to 33 games. Ryan Howard hits his 36th home run in the game as the right side of the Philadelphia looks better and better every day. The Phillies lead the Cardinals 5-3 in the bottom of the sixth in St. Louis.

Chase Utley extends his hit streak to 32 games with a single in the sixth. He's then removed from the lineup to get some rest as the game is a blow out.

Chase Utley continues his hot hitting in the night-cap of the Marlins/Phillies double header. He's 1 for 3 so far this evening.

Ryan Howard delivers his 35th home run of the season, part of a four run sixth inning that puts the Phillies up 5-2 as they go for the sweep of the twin bill. And he hit it off Pinto!

Update: Utley adds a home run for another multi-hit game in the streak.

Chase Utley collected two more hits so far today to extend his streak to 30 games. It's his 19th multi-hit game of the streak, and 6th in his last seven games.

The Philies are up 9-4 on the Marlins in the top of the sixth. Wolf went 4 1/3 innings in his comeback, walking five. He did strike out four, however, and threw 97 pitches.

Chase Utley lines a single to center in the bottom of the eighth inning to extend his hitting streak to 28 games. It also puts the tying run on for the Phillies with one out in the innings.

Update: Abreu grounds into a force play, then with Howard at the plate, gets picked up by Tankersley. They're going to the ninth with the Marlins leading 1-0.

Chase Utley led off the bottom of the fifth inning with a single to extend his hit streak to 27 games. He then stole a base and scored on a Howard double as the right side of the Phillies infield conspires to put Arizona behind 3-2 in the top of the sixth.

Update: Utley picks up a second hit as the Phillies defeat the DBacks 5-2. One more game and he's halfway to DiMaggio.

Chase Utley keeps his hitting streak alive with two more this tonight. One of them, his 19th home run of the year. He has 45 hits and ten walks in the streak, meaning he's been reaching base over two times a game. What a great run. In less than two seasons, he's easily become the best second baseman in the major leagues.

Chase Utley extended his hit streak to 25 games in the first inning tonight with his 17th home run of the season, a two-run shot. That's his fifth homer of the streak and his 18th extra-base hit.

Rollins is 0 for 4 through seven innings. The Phillies are trailing 4-2 in the bottom of the eighth. He'll need a couple of batters to get on base to get a chance to bat in the bottom of the ninth.

Update: The Phillies went down 1-2-3 in the 8th. Rollins is due up fifth in the ninth.

Update: The Phillies go down 1-2-3 in the 9th as well. Rollins streak ends. Still 36 games in one season, and 38 over two is pretty impressive. Congratulations to Jimmy on a fine performance.

Lots of good information at Balls, Sticks and Stuff on Jimmy Rollins and how he changed as a hitter in the last quarter of 2005.

Jimmy Rollins wastes no time getting another hit, doubling leading off the bottom half of the first for the Phillies.

Pettitte ends Nomar's hit streak at 26, but Lofton went 3 for 5 to extend his hit streak to 25. We'll see how far Kenny can take his now.