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:

• 0.330 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Antonio Senzatela.
• 0.317 — Michael Brantley batting against Ariel Jurado.
• 0.312 — Jeff McNeil batting against Jeff Samardzija.
• 0.310 — Kevin Newman batting against Zach Eflin.
• 0.310 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Daniel Norris.
• 0.309 — Whit Merrifield batting against Adam Plutko.
• 0.308 — Bryan Reynolds batting against Zach Eflin.
• 0.307 — Daniel Santana batting against Jose Urquidy.
• 0.306 — Melky Cabrera batting against Zach Eflin.
• 0.300 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Antonio Senzatela.
• 0.299 — Yulieski Gurriel batting against Ariel Jurado.

The list goes to eleven today to show the Gurriel brothers both hitting well.

Log5 credits the LeMahieu match-up against Senzatela with a very high hit average. Note, however, that Senzatela’s batting averages shows a nearly 30 point difference home and road for his career, so that number might be a bit generous.

Here are the neural network picks:

• 0.312, 0.763 — Jeff McNeil batting against Jeff Samardzija.
• 0.330, 0.748 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Antonio Senzatela.
• 0.317, 0.744 — Michael Brantley batting against Ariel Jurado.
• 0.309, 0.732 — Whit Merrifield batting against Adam Plutko.
• 0.306, 0.729 — Melky Cabrera batting against Zach Eflin.
• 0.310, 0.729 — Kevin Newman batting against Zach Eflin.
• 0.308, 0.727 — Bryan Reynolds batting against Zach Eflin.
• 0.273, 0.722 — Howie Kendrick batting against Michael Soroka.
• 0.299, 0.721 — Yulieski Gurriel batting against Ariel Jurado.
• 0.310, 0.720 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Daniel Norris.
• 0.283, 0.720 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Masahiro Tanaka.
• 0.307, 0.720 — Daniel Santana batting against Jose Urquidy.

The NN does take into account the hit average of the park. Right now, Yankee Stadium’s three-year hit average is at .222, a few points below the league average of .229. That helps moderate the high hit average the Log5 method produces. McNeil came out on top of the NN in 14 of the last 18 days of games. He collected a hit in 12 of those games, with today’s contest pending. He and LeMahieu are tied for the consensus first pick.

I do not guarantee results. Your best pick is going to have about a 25% chance of not getting a hit. Good luck!