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:
- 0.297 — Freddie Freeman batting against Jake Woodford.
- 0.295 — Nick Castellanos batting against Jose Urquidy.
- 0.294 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against Noah Syndergaard.
- 0.287 — Bryson Stott batting against Jose Urquidy.
- 0.286 — Nico Hoerner batting against Bryan Hoeing.
- 0.285 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Alex Cobb.
- 0.285 — Bo Bichette batting against Marco Gonzales.
- 0.285 — Trea Turner batting against Jose Urquidy.
- 0.285 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Austin Gomber.
- 0.279 — William Contreras batting against Jose Suarez.
Woodford does not strike out batters, just 90 in 590 batters faced since the start of the 2021 season. Freeman owns a low K rate for a slugger. Even though the method only looks at hit averages, those are tied to Ks indirectly, and it appears to pick that up. A batter who puts the ball in play against a pitcher who allows the ball to be put in play provides a good chance of advancing a streak.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.262, 0.719 — Luis Arraez batting against Justin Steele.
- 0.285, 0.708 — Bo Bichette batting against Marco Gonzales.
- 0.286, 0.707 — Nico Hoerner batting against Bryan Hoeing.
- 0.297, 0.705 — Freddie Freeman batting against Jake Woodford.
- 0.294, 0.702 — Paul Goldschmidt batting against Noah Syndergaard.
- 0.295, 0.701 — Nick Castellanos batting against Jose Urquidy.
- 0.285, 0.699 — Trea Turner batting against Jose Urquidy.
- 0.285, 0.696 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Austin Gomber.
- 0.285, 0.694 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Alex Cobb.
- 0.262, 0.689 — Harold Ramirez batting against Michael Clevinger.
The NN provides a very similar list, with the big difference coming from Luis Arraez on top here, and not appearing in the Log5 group. Steele is the opposite of Woodford, as Steele issues lots of walks and sends lots of batters down via the K. That leads to a low BA against, and a very low long-term hit average of .200. He pulls Arraez down, while Steele promotes Freeman.
Freeman is the consensus top pick, with Hoerner, Goldschmidt and Castellanos tied for the consensus double down 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!