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:
- 0.312 — Ke’Bryan Hayes batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.308 — Michael Chavis batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.304 — Aaron Judge batting against Bruce Zimmermann.
- 0.301 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.298 — Tim Anderson batting against Nick Pivetta.
- 0.290 — Jeff McNeil batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.287 — Benjamin Gamel batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.283 — Starling Marte batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.283 — Giancarlo Stanton batting against Bruce Zimmermann.
- 0.279 — Michael Brantley batting against Zach Plesac.
Hayes is having a terrific year getting on base, hitting .290 with a .377 OBP, with 40 hits in 38 games.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.298, 0.741 — Tim Anderson batting against Nick Pivetta.
- 0.301, 0.706 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.266, 0.701 — Trea Turner batting against Josiah Gray.
- 0.304, 0.700 — Aaron Judge batting against Bruce Zimmermann.
- 0.312, 0.694 — Ke’Bryan Hayes batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.279, 0.691 — Michael Brantley batting against Zach Plesac.
- 0.283, 0.689 — Starling Marte batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.269, 0.689 — Luis Arraez batting against Beau Brieske.
- 0.262, 0.688 — Rafael Devers batting against Dylan Cease.
- 0.265, 0.688 — Ty France batting against James Kaprielian.
Anderson continues to be head and shoulders above everyone else this season in terms of his probability of delivering a hit. In a season in which putting the ball in play is the key to success at the plate, Anderson walked six times and struck out just 17 times in 155 PA. Anderson, Hayes, and Goldschmidt are all tied for the consensus top pick.
League hit average is now up to .212. Players are starting to near 200 PA, at which point their season hit average counts fully, so we should be seeing higher probabilities soon.
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!