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 projected hit averages versus starting pitchers:
- 0.358 — Heliot Ramos batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.344 — Jung Hoo Lee batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.327 — Tyler Fitzgerald batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.324 — Wilmer Flores batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.311 — Dominic Smith batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.309 — Logan Porter batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.305 — Christian Koss batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.302 — Jerar Encarnacion batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.301 — Casey Schmitt batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.300 — Aaron Judge batting at Seth Lugo.
With only eight games on tap today, anyone in the Giants lineup should do against Senzatela.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting at least one hit:
- 0.358, 0.734 — Heliot Ramos batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.300, 0.726 — Aaron Judge batting at Seth Lugo.
- 0.344, 0.716 — Jung Hoo Lee batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.294, 0.704 — Jeremy Pena batting vs. Davis Martin.
- 0.327, 0.703 — Tyler Fitzgerald batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.264, 0.694 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting vs. Will Warren.
- 0.324, 0.690 — Wilmer Flores batting at Antonio Senzatela.
- 0.275, 0.689 — Jose Altuve batting vs. Davis Martin.
- 0.284, 0.687 — Kerry Carpenter batting at Dean Kremer.
- 0.268, 0.683 — Brendan Donovan batting at Jacob Misiorowski.
Donovan suffered a toe injury, but it’s not clear if he will need to go on the illjured list.
Ramos and Lee serve as the consensus double down picks today. It’s an afternoon game in Colorado, so get your picks in early.
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!
Jeremy Pena, then Heliot Ramos are the best picks.
Thanks so much for sharing your process — the work you’re doing with David’s data and the patterns you’ve uncovered is truly fascinating. I’m especially interested in the 14 different scenarios you mentioned that show probabilities between 77% and 95%.
I’d love to contribute or help out in any way I can, whether that’s data cleaning, testing your ideas, or digging deeper into trends alongside you. Would you be open to sharing access to the spreadsheet you’re working with? And if you’re willing, I’d really appreciate learning more about those 14 scenarios — how you define them and what patterns you’ve identified that lead to those high-probability outcomes.
Not sure if you remember our first conversation, but since then I’ve improved my win/loss ratio to about 70%, which is a significant jump from the 59%-63% range I was in before — all just by following your advice about the .315 AVG / .707 NN threshold. That guidance alone has made a huge difference. In fact, this week alone I’m currently sitting at 86%.
Well Dennis, I hope you listened to me today/tonight. Jeremy Pena was 93 to, get this, 100% odds to get a hit and Heliot Ramos was 85.71 to 90% odds. I have never had a player hit 100% before, so that was cool. They both got their hits.
I was busy working on more scenarios, think I found two more of the 80 to 89% variety. So, if you are playing at home that would mean I am up to 16 scenarios. And BTW, I put my money where my mouth is and played Ramos and Pena tonight. I am trying to crush the odds.
I am glad you are having fun and improving with your results. Just keep in mind, its .317 and .707, not .315. I don’t want anyone to get dinged.
The goal is to get 1 HIT, it does not matter if a player gets 2, 3, 4, or 5 hits. It’s all the same after one hit.
Also, if you have ever looked at the rules to beat the streak, if all the PAs end with a BB, HBP, CI, and no official at bat, it’s as if they player did not play, because it does not count against you.
I am going to try and find one more scenario, then scrape more data this weekend, since it will probably rain, all weekend long. Just in case you were curious, my career is a data analyst, but I have played baseball since I was nine.