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 against starting pitchers:
- 0.316 — Jose Iglesias batting against Jonathan Cannon.
- 0.311 — Masataka Yoshida batting against Casey Mize.
- 0.311 — Amed Rosario batting against DL Hall.
- 0.311 — Jarren Duran batting against Casey Mize.
- 0.298 — Rafael Devers batting against Casey Mize.
- 0.297 — Yandy Diaz batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.295 — Connor Wong batting against Casey Mize.
- 0.290 — Steven Kwan batting against Bailey Falter.
- 0.289 — Rob Refsnyder batting against Casey Mize.
- 0.286 — Ceddanne Rafaela batting against Casey Mize.
It looks like a good day for the Red Sox as Mize is a low strikeout and walk pitcher with a high BABIP.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.316, 0.733 — Jose Iglesias batting against Jonathan Cannon.
- 0.281, 0.732 — Luis Arraez batting against Taj Bradley.
- 0.311, 0.717 — Amed Rosario batting against DL Hall.
- 0.281, 0.714 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Framber Valdez.
- 0.311, 0.713 — Masataka Yoshida batting against Casey Mize.
- 0.311, 0.710 — Jarren Duran batting against Casey Mize.
- 0.275, 0.704 — Yainer Diaz batting against Seth Lugo.
- 0.297, 0.700 — Yandy Diaz batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.290, 0.698 — Steven Kwan batting against Bailey Falter.
- 0.270, 0.697 — Jose Altuve batting against Seth Lugo.
It’s a day that starts with a Y as you can double down with two Y. Diazes! They are not related. Bill James usually shies away from combined stats comparisons, but does like Duran’s combination of extra-base hits and stolen bases.
All that said, Iglesias and Rosario are the consensus double down picks of the day.