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:
- 0.325 — Luis Robert batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.315 — Rafael Devers batting against Dean Kremer.
- 0.309 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Dean Kremer.
- 0.300 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against German Marquez.
- 0.296 — Jose Abreu batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.295 — Alex Verdugo batting against Dean Kremer.
- 0.295 — Jose Iglesias batting against Dakota Hudson.
- 0.294 — Andrew Vaughn batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.294 — Eloy Jimenez batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.294 — Donovan Solano batting against Drew Smyly.
Greinke became a pitch to contact hurler this season, so opponents are able to get hits against him.
Here are the NN results:
- 0.325, 0.740 — Luis Robert batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.295, 0.727 — Jose Iglesias batting against Dakota Hudson.
- 0.315, 0.721 — Rafael Devers batting against Dean Kremer.
- 0.300, 0.717 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against German Marquez.
- 0.309, 0.717 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Dean Kremer.
- 0.293, 0.709 — Nico Hoerner batting against Nick Lodolo.
- 0.292, 0.706 — Harold Castro batting against Zach Plesac.
- 0.294, 0.702 — Donovan Solano batting against Drew Smyly.
- 0.295, 0.701 — Alex Verdugo batting against Dean Kremer.
- 0.275, 0.698 — Yonathan Daza batting against Dakota Hudson.
Robert is the unanimous top pick, with Devers the consensus second choice.
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!