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:
- 0.342 — Ketel Marte batting against Johnny Cueto.
- 0.324 — Jean Segura batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.321 — Harold Castro batting against Garrett Richards.
- 0.320 — David Fletcher batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.318 — Rafael Ortega batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.309 — Jose Iglesias batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.309 — Freddie Freeman batting against Jon Lester.
- 0.305 — Ozzie Albies batting against Jon Lester.
- 0.304 — Jonathan Schoop batting against Garrett Richards.
- 0.302 — Austin Riley batting against Jon Lester.
It looks like a good day to pick one of the Braves with Lester on the mound for St. Louis. Marte and Segura are frequent visitors to the top of this list. Ortega is starting to accumulate enough plate appearances blunt the regressions on his numbers. His .319 BA with a .369 OBP indicates a high hit average.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.342, 0.767 — Ketel Marte batting against Johnny Cueto.
- 0.300, 0.733 — Tim Anderson batting against Kris Bubic.
- 0.320, 0.732 — David Fletcher batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.321, 0.729 — Harold Castro batting against Garrett Richards.
- 0.324, 0.724 — Jean Segura batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.309, 0.722 — Jose Iglesias batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.293, 0.710 — Buster Posey batting against Madison Bumgarner.
- 0.258, 0.710 — Michael Brantley batting against Walker Buehler.
- 0.318, 0.702 — Rafael Ortega batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.304, 0.701 — Jonathan Schoop batting against Garrett Richards.
Marte is way ahead of everyone else in terms of probability of a hit. Fletcher, Castro, and Segura are tied for consensus second pick.
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!