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.
The Log5 Method yields these top picks:
- 0.320 — Manny Machado batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.319 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.316 — Eric Hosmer batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.295 — Rafael Devers batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.293 — Luis Arraez batting against Josh Fleming.
- 0.284 — Taylor Ward batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.284 — Jose Iglesias batting against Reiver Sanmartin.
- 0.283 — Trea Turner batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.282 — Jonathan India batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.281 — Mike Trout batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.281 — Kyle Farmer batting against Kyle Freeland.
It is unusual to see a hitter like Mike Trout on the list. Even though he is the best offensive player of his generation, Trout tends to draw a ton of walks, which lowers the probability of him getting a hit in any particular game. That hasn’t really changed, as he owns a .323/.447/.694 slash line. What changed is the league not hitting, so someone with a high BA, even though they walk a ton, is going to make it into this list.
I also think we should refer to the Farmer versus Freeland as Fast Food, the KF Combination.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.319, 0.716 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.320, 0.715 — Manny Machado batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.316, 0.710 — Eric Hosmer batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.283, 0.705 — Trea Turner batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.293, 0.692 — Luis Arraez batting against Josh Fleming.
- 0.284, 0.691 — Jose Iglesias batting against Reiver Sanmartin.
- 0.253, 0.690 — Tim Anderson batting against Michael Lorenzen.
- 0.271, 0.685 — Michael Brantley batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.295, 0.682 — Rafael Devers batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.269, 0.672 — Freddie Freeman batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
The two systems pretty much agree on the top three picks, with the NN favoring Bogaerts over Machado. Note that these are the batting leaders this season, with Hosmer leading the NL at .389 with Machado right behind him at .386, Bogaerts leads he AL at .375.
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!