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:
- 0.301 — Tyler Stephenson batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.300 — Andrew Benintendi batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.300 — Jose Iglesias batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.295 — Nolan Arenado batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.293 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.292 — Luis Arraez batting against Aaron Civale.
- 0.290 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Dane Dunning.
- 0.286 — Harold Castro batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.284 — C.J. Cron batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.283 — Yonathan Daza batting against Zack Greinke.
Stephenson is a new name at the top of the list. The Reds catcher hit .349/.417/.619 so far this season, with a career line of .295/.374/.467. Keller of the Pirates allowed 33 hits in 28 innings, so you can see where this might be a good match-up for a hit.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.270, 0.710 — Tim Anderson batting against Gerrit Cole.
- 0.300, 0.708 — Jose Iglesias batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.290, 0.704 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Dane Dunning.
- 0.300, 0.696 — Andrew Benintendi batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.280, 0.694 — Manny Machado batting against Max Fried.
- 0.292, 0.692 — Luis Arraez batting against Aaron Civale.
- 0.301, 0.690 — Tyler Stephenson batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.253, 0.685 — Trea Turner batting against Kyle Gibson.
- 0.272, 0.683 — Eric Hosmer batting against Max Fried.
- 0.279, 0.683 — Rafael Devers batting against Dane Dunning.
- 0.293, 0.683 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against Logan Webb.
It’s a testament to Tim Anderson’s ability to collect hits that he can still come up as number one against Gerrit Cole. Igleias is the consensus first pick, Benintendi the 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!
Hi David,
I’m very interested in your research. Here’s my question: can you put your finger on what makes these players more likely to get a hit than a “scrub,” an average hitter? Is it hard contact as a whole, recent hard contact or something else? Because isn’t BABIP largely based on luck which is by nature something that can change on a day-to-day basis? Would love your thoughts on this.
Jared
It’s really a combination of talents, but what I constantly find interesting is that top of the order hitters tend to dominate the list. Singles hitters rather than power hitters. These types tend to strike out less, so there are more balls in play. They also tend to be faster, so they collect some infield hits.
The NN is agnostic on how the hits are obtained, it’s mostly looking at who has a high, long-term hit average.
So how do you explain the recent success of a guy like Tyler Stephenson who’s slugging over .600 and batting 5th? Your picks for today indicate that he’s still a top pick despite not hitting at the top of the lineup. Or is he the outlier?
There is a long-term and short-term component to the calculation. Sometimes, the short-term can be so good that it dominates.
2022 is also a down offensive year for most players, and that gives the hot, short-term a chance to dominate even more.