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:
- 0.320, 0.710 — Nick Gonzales batting vs. Kyle Freeland.
- 0.308, 0.696 — Isiah Kiner-Falefa batting vs. Kyle Freeland.
- 0.307, 0.717 — Bo Bichette batting at Janson Junk.
- 0.301, 0.718 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting at Chris Paddack.
- 0.300, 0.715 — Trea Turner batting vs. Mitchell Parker.
- 0.295, 0.675 — Tommy Pham batting vs. Kyle Freeland.
- 0.294, 0.675 — Spencer Horwitz batting vs. Kyle Freeland.
- 0.293, 0.702 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting at Janson Junk.
- 0.291, 0.697 — Ernie Clement batting at Janson Junk.
- 0.291, 0.675 — Bryan Reynolds batting vs. Kyle Freeland.
It’s a Pirates heavy day once again as they face a poor Rockies starter. Freeland is much tougher to hit away from Coors Field, however.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting at least one hit:
- 0.287, 0.721 — Miguel Andujar batting at Nabil Crismatt.
- 0.301, 0.718 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting at Chris Paddack.
- 0.307, 0.717 — Bo Bichette batting at Janson Junk.
- 0.300, 0.715 — Trea Turner batting vs. Mitchell Parker.
- 0.320, 0.710 — Nick Gonzales batting vs. Kyle Freeland.
- 0.289, 0.708 — Jacob Wilson batting at George Kirby.
- 0.280, 0.705 — Xavier Edwards batting vs. Jose Berrios.
- 0.293, 0.702 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting at Janson Junk.
- 0.291, 0.697 — Ernie Clement batting at Janson Junk.
- 0.308, 0.696 — Isiah Kiner-Falefa batting vs. Kyle Freeland.
Andujar came up as a good pick all season long, and collected hits in 72.4% of his games. His probability today is right in line with that, on a low probability day. Crismatt pitched little in his last three seasons, so his numbers are highly regressed to the league mean of .220, so there is little extra information there.
Bichette, Gonzales, and Witt all tie for the consensus top pick. Witt owns an eleven game hit streak, second longest in the majors right now. The longest streak belongs to Tyler Soderstrom of the Athletics, twenty games (including two pushes). The NN puts his probability of continuing the streak at .637. For his career, he is a low BABIP, high strikeout batter. It’s a tough choice today.
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!