For the past two 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. If you find this useful, please support Baseball Musings with a donation.

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.

For 2019, I am just going to publish the Log5 hit averages and the NN probabilities with parks factored in. I am keeping track of the results here. I added a graph that gives a visual representation of the probability and success each day.

First, the Log5 Method picks:

• 0.309 — Anthony Rendon batting against Jose Urena.
• 0.302 — Howie Kendrick batting against Jose Urena.
• 0.294 — Trey Mancini batting against Martin Perez.
• 0.292 — Adam C Eaton batting against Jose Urena.
• 0.292 — Tim Anderson batting against Daniel Norris.
• 0.287 — Jeff McNeil batting against Miles Mikolas.
• 0.284 — Jorge Polanco batting against Daniel Straily.
• 0.284 — Jean Segura batting against Antonio Senzatela.
• 0.283 — Jose Altuve batting against Adrian Sampson.
• 0.282 — Austin Meadows batting against Rick Porcello.
• 0.282 — Jorge Polanco batting against Alex Cobb.

Rendon owns a 17-game hit streak. So does one bet on him because he is hot, or does one bet against him because long streaks tend to end. I believe the answer should be that you ignore the streak. While I would not argue that today’s performance is independent of recent performance, I doubt the dependence is very high. If Rendon has a high probability of getting a hit, then that probability should hold no matter how long the streak lasted.

Urena does not have a history of giving up lots of hits, but batters are hitting .337 against him so far this season. As we’ve seen in the last few days, however, many pitchers who got off to poor starts are finding their grooves.

Here are the neural network picks:

• 0.302, 0.717 — Howie Kendrick batting against Jose Urena.
• 0.309, 0.716 — Anthony Rendon batting against Jose Urena.
• 0.284, 0.715 — Jean Segura batting against Antonio Senzatela.
• 0.283, 0.714 — Jose Altuve batting against Adrian Sampson.
• 0.287, 0.704 — Jeff McNeil batting against Miles Mikolas.
• 0.278, 0.703 — Jose Martinez batting against Chris Flexen.
• 0.282, 0.699 — Jorge Polanco batting against Alex Cobb.
• 0.273, 0.698 — Christian Yelich batting against Hyun-Jin Ryu.
• 0.292, 0.698 — Tim Anderson batting against Daniel Norris.
• 0.294, 0.696 — Trey Mancini batting against Martin Perez.
• 0.266, 0.696 — David Peralta batting against Yu Darvish.

Kendrick owns a better long-term hit average, while Rendon dominates this season. The NN puts the most weight on the long-term average, so Kendrick beats Rendon by a hair. With Kendrick, however, one needs to pay attention that he’s actually starting the game.

Rendon is four for nine against Urena with a walk and two strikeouts. Kendrick is three for nine with a double, a home run, and two strikeouts.

Watch out for the double headers as well, make sure someone who you might pick is starting the game of interest for you.

I do not guarantee results. Your best pick is going to have about a 25% chance of not getting a hit. Good luck!