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 results:
- 0.311 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against Jose Berrios.
- 0.309 — Aaron Judge batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.297 — Tyler Stephenson batting against Drew Smyly.
- 0.295 — Giancarlo Stanton batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.290 — Manny Machado batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.286 — Jeff McNeil batting against Alex Cobb.
- 0.285 — Isiah Kiner-Falefa batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.284 — Yadiel Hernandez batting against Tyler Anderson.
- 0.284 — Starling Marte batting against Alex Cobb.
- 0.283 — Ketel Marte batting against Zack Greinke.
It’s nice to see Ketel Marte back on the list. After a slow start, he’s hitting .348/.416/.580 in his last nineteen games.
The top of this list is dominated by sluggers. With home runs down, one might think this group would be doing poorly, but they seem to have adjusted.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.311, 0.712 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against Jose Berrios.
- 0.290, 0.709 — Manny Machado batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.275, 0.704 — Trea Turner batting against Joan Adon.
- 0.309, 0.700 — Aaron Judge batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.278, 0.691 — Ty France batting against Zach Logue.
- 0.279, 0.690 — Andrew Benintendi batting against Zach Davies.
- 0.284, 0.688 — Starling Marte batting against Alex Cobb.
- 0.276, 0.688 — C.J. Cron batting against Jonathan Brubaker.
- 0.297, 0.686 — Tyler Stephenson batting against Drew Smyly.
- 0.266, 0.686 — Jose Iglesias batting against Jonathan Brubaker.
The two systems agree on Goldschmidt, who owns a .393 BABIP this season. That would be a single season high for him. For his career, the number stands at .348. He is also striking out at a lower rate this season; he’s making contact more often and the ball is falling in more often.
Judge is the consensus second pick. Judge’s BABIP stands at .356, more in line with his career mark of .347. His strikeouts are down only slightly, but with him still powering the ball out of the yard, he compensating for those Ks.
The NN is now even on the season, with an expected 31.9 games with a hit, and an actual 32 games with a hit.
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!