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:
- 0.338 — Harold Castro batting against Matt Harvey.
- 0.329 — Jonathan Schoop batting against Matt Harvey.
- 0.312 — Tim Anderson batting against Jean Carlos Mejia.
- 0.308 — Josh Harrison batting against Trevor Williams.
- 0.305 — Jean Segura batting against Wil Crowe.
- 0.303 — Jorge Polanco batting against Wade LeBlanc.
- 0.303 — Jeimer Candelario batting against Matt Harvey.
- 0.302 — Bo Bichette batting against Daniel Lynch.
- 0.300 — Akil Baddoo batting against Matt Harvey.
- 0.298 — Juan Soto batting against Trevor Williams.
It’s a tough day to pick players as you don’t know who will be scratched at the last minute due to a trade. It does look like a good day to be choosing Tigers hitters, however.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.312, 0.739 — Tim Anderson batting against Jean Carlos Mejia.
- 0.338, 0.737 — Harold Castro batting against Matt Harvey.
- 0.329, 0.721 — Jonathan Schoop batting against Matt Harvey.
- 0.302, 0.718 — Bo Bichette batting against Daniel Lynch.
- 0.293, 0.714 — Salvador Perez batting against Ross Stripling.
- 0.305, 0.711 — Jean Segura batting against Wil Crowe.
- 0.297, 0.704 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Daniel Lynch.
- 0.264, 0.703 — David Fletcher batting against Chris Bassitt.
- 0.308, 0.701 — Josh Harrison batting against Trevor Williams.
- 0.240, 0.700 — Michael Brantley batting against Kevin Gausman.
I would be tempted to double down on Bichette and Guerrero. They are not going to be traded, and I suspect that with the Blue Jays back in Canada for the first time in almost two years, they’ll be putting on a show. Castro is the consensus first pick, with Anderson the consensus second choice.
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!