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:
- 0.323 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.319 — Yonathan Daza batting against Madison Bumgarner.
- 0.308 — Alex Verdugo batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.307 — Michael Harris II batting against George Kirby.
- 0.301 — Rafael Devers batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.300 — Harold Ramirez batting against Jameson Taillon.
- 0.300 — Nathaniel Lowe batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.300 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against Jonathan Brubaker.
- 0.298 — Christian Arroyo batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.294 — Jake McCarthy batting against Jose Urena.
Bogaerts produced multiple hits in twelve of his last 14 games. He now leads the AL batting race by five points over Luis Arraez. Note that Bogarts is just three for fourteen with six K against Lyles.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.323, 0.730 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.319, 0.729 — Yonathan Daza batting against Madison Bumgarner.
- 0.300, 0.719 — Harold Ramirez batting against Jameson Taillon.
- 0.300, 0.715 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against Jonathan Brubaker.
- 0.308, 0.712 — Alex Verdugo batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.307, 0.710 — Michael Harris II batting against George Kirby.
- 0.283, 0.710 — Luis Robert batting against Adrian Martinez.
- 0.266, 0.706 — Trea Turner batting against Blake Snell.
- 0.289, 0.702 — Donovan Solano batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.292, 0.702 — Bo Bichette batting against Kohei Arihara.
The two systems are in agreement with Bogaerts and Daza as the double down choices. Daza produces a high batting average, accounting for most of his OBP. That kind of player is a good choice for extending a hit streak. He should appear near the top of these list more often now that he has enough plate appearances that his hit averages are no longer regressed toward the mean.
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!