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:
- 0.307 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.299 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.292 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Jordan Montgomery.
- 0.284 — Aaron Judge batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.271 — Giancarlo Stanton batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.267 — J.D. Martinez batting against Jordan Montgomery.
- 0.267 — Rafael Devers batting against Jordan Montgomery.
- 0.266 — Alex Verdugo batting against Jordan Montgomery.
- 0.262 — Luke Voit batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.256 — Gleyber Torres batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
There is just one game tonight, the Red Sox at the Yankees. Rodriguez is one of two pitchers Urshela faced at least 20 times in his career. He owns six hits in those twenty PA, so his hit average against Rodriguez is .300, pretty close to the .307 prediction.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.292, 0.715 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Jordan Montgomery.
- 0.307, 0.709 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.299, 0.706 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.267, 0.679 — Rafael Devers batting against Jordan Montgomery.
- 0.266, 0.678 — Alex Verdugo batting against Jordan Montgomery.
- 0.267, 0.672 — J.D. Martinez batting against Jordan Montgomery.
- 0.284, 0.670 — Aaron Judge batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.255, 0.659 — Christian Vazquez batting against Jordan Montgomery.
- 0.271, 0.649 — Giancarlo Stanton batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.262, 0.642 — Luke Voit batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
The source I use has Montgomery pitching for the Yankees, but New York has not made an official announcement about the starter. Bogaerts comes out on top in this calculation. Bogaerts is 9 for 17 against Montgomery for his career with one walk and just two strikeouts, so this looks like a pretty good match-up for extending a hit streak.
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!