For the past few 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.
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.
Here are the Log5 Method picks:
- 0.322 — Jesse Winker batting against Trevor Cahill.
- 0.302 — Nick Castellanos batting against Trevor Cahill.
- 0.297 — Jean Segura batting against Jon Lester.
- 0.296 — Bo Bichette batting against Max Fried.
- 0.296 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Max Fried.
- 0.293 — Randal Grichuk batting against Max Fried.
- 0.286 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Collin McHugh.
- 0.285 — Xander Bogaerts batting against James Kaprielian.
- 0.283 — Teoscar Hernandez batting against Max Fried.
- 0.280 — Trea Turner batting against Zack Wheeler.
Note that the Padres and Rockies play a doubleheader today, and you should avoid picks associated with those games. That’s due to both the uncertainty of who will start each game and the seven inning limit. Winker and Castellanos both started hot for the Reds, with high batting averages despite high strikeout rates. Cahill does not blow batters, away, however, so this should be a good match-up.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.280, 0.714 — Trea Turner batting against Zack Wheeler.
- 0.322, 0.714 — Jesse Winker batting against Trevor Cahill.
- 0.285, 0.714 — Xander Bogaerts batting against James Kaprielian.
- 0.255, 0.708 — Tim Anderson batting against J.A. Happ.
- 0.297, 0.707 — Jean Segura batting against Jon Lester.
- 0.286, 0.706 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Collin McHugh.
- 0.270, 0.698 — Jose Iglesias batting against Jose Urquidy.
- 0.268, 0.696 — Yordan Alvarez batting against Andrew Heaney.
- 0.264, 0.695 — Michael Brantley batting against Andrew Heaney.
- 0.302, 0.691 — Nick Castellanos batting against Trevor Cahill.
It’s a low probability hit day, as there is a three-way tie for first place, at least out to three decimals. The sort is on a higher precision, so Turner likely is first here. Winker is the consensus first pick. Segura is consensus second pick on a day where there is little agreement between the two systems. Turner faced Wheeler a decent number of times in his career, and is nine for twenty eight with just three strikeouts.
You can follow the NN results on this spreadsheet. I do not guarantee results. Your best pick is going to have about a 25% chance of not getting a hit. Good luck!