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:
- 0.313 — Tim Anderson batting against Kyle Hendricks.
- 0.306 — Jose Iglesias batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.300 — C.J. Cron batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.298 — Randal Grichuk batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.293 — Yonathan Daza batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.293 — Manny Machado batting against Zach Plesac.
- 0.290 — Eric Hosmer batting against Zach Plesac.
- 0.284 — Andrew Benintendi batting against Adam Wainwright.
- 0.284 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.282 — Luis Robert batting against Kyle Hendricks.
With Patrick Corbin on the mound for the Nationals, it looks like it will be a good day for the Rockies hitters. Note there are two doubleheaders on Wednesday, so be careful if you are picking a batter from one of those games.
Here are the NN results:
- 0.313, 0.734 — Tim Anderson batting against Kyle Hendricks.
- 0.306, 0.707 — Jose Iglesias batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.281, 0.699 — Trea Turner batting against Alex Wood.
- 0.293, 0.692 — Manny Machado batting against Zach Plesac.
- 0.282, 0.690 — Luis Robert batting against Kyle Hendricks.
- 0.269, 0.689 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Reid Detmers.
- 0.300, 0.688 — C.J. Cron batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.290, 0.688 — Eric Hosmer batting against Zach Plesac.
- 0.284, 0.685 — Andrew Benintendi batting against Adam Wainwright.
- 0.298, 0.683 — Randal Grichuk batting against Patrick Corbin.
Anderson and Iglesias come up at the top of both lists, and they are the double down picks of the day. Anderson is hot, with a five-game hit streak in which he is nine for twenty. Bobby Witt, Jr. of the Royals owns the longest current hit streak, eleven games. He is now hitting well after a rather slow start.
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!