For the past two years Baseball Musings tried to help with playing Beat the Streak. The Day by Day Database keeps track of hit streak of at least five games. In addition, two programs produce top ten lists of players with a high probability of a hit. If you find this useful, please support Baseball Musings with a donation.
Here are the top picks my programs produced for use in Beat the Streak. This post mostly explains the ideas behind the calculations. In addition, this post shows tests on the Neural Network (NN). This post discusses an NN that includes the ballpark. I updated the models, and the results of those tests are here.
First, the Log5 Method picks:
- 0.322 — Melky Cabrera batting against Zach Davies.
- 0.319 — Jeff McNeil batting against Vincent Velasquez.
- 0.317 — Bryan Reynolds batting against Zach Davies.
- 0.310 — Jose Martinez batting against Drew Pomeranz.
- 0.310 — Kevin Newman batting against Zach Davies.
- 0.309 — Jorge Polanco batting against Adrian Sampson.
- 0.306 — Ketel Marte batting against Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.303 — Rafael Devers batting against Gregory Soto.
- 0.300 — Hanser Alberto batting against Aaron Sanchez.
- 0.300 — Luis Arraez batting against Adrian Sampson.
Rookies like Luis Arraez usually don’t make the top ten, but he is off to a fantastic start. In 81 PA he owns a .414 BA and a .481 OBP. That’s good enough that even the heavy regression applied to his hit averages show him doing well. Facing Sampson helps, as he owns low K and BB rates with a high BABIP.
Here are the neural network picks:
0.319, 0.762 — Jeff McNeil batting against Vincent Velasquez.
0.322, 0.741 — Melky Cabrera batting against Zach Davies.
0.291, 0.733 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Zack Greinke.
0.317, 0.728 — Bryan Reynolds batting against Zach Davies.
0.310, 0.724 — Jose Martinez batting against Drew Pomeranz.
0.281, 0.723 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Brendan McKay.
0.276, 0.723 — Howie Kendrick batting against Brad Keller.
0.309, 0.722 — Jorge Polanco batting against Adrian Sampson.
0.303, 0.722 — Rafael Devers batting against Gregory Soto.
0.310, 0.718 — Kevin Newman batting against Zach Davies.
0.290, 0.718 — J.D. Martinez batting against Gregory Soto.
0.284, 0.718 — Whit Merrifield batting against Austin Voth.
McNeil and Melky Cabrera are tied for the consensus first pick, but McNeil’s .762 probability of getting a hit is much higher than Cabrera. The NN knocks Arraez down quite a bit, giving him a .703 probability of a hit.
I do not guarantee results. Your best pick is going to have about a 25% chance of not getting a hit. Good luck!