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.

First, the Log5 Method picks:

• 0.326 — David Fletcher batting against Mike Leake.
• 0.324 — Howie Kendrick batting against Tyler Mahle.
• 0.312 — Tommy La Stella batting against Mike Leake.
• 0.307 — Anthony Rendon batting against Tyler Mahle.
• 0.301 — Nolan Arenado batting against Edwin Jackson.
• 0.298 — Javier Baez batting against Miles Mikolas.
• 0.296 — Cody Bellinger batting against Jake Arrieta.
• 0.293 — Trey Mancini batting against Drew Pomeranz.
• 0.291 — Hanser Alberto batting against Drew Pomeranz.
• 0.290 — Brian Goodwin batting against Mike Leake.

Fletcher turns 25 today, so he stands at the start of his peak years. In his brief career in the majors he hit .290 with a .337 OBP, so he mostly gets on base via hits. He only strikes out about 10% of the time, so he puts the ball in play. I suspect we’ll be seeing more of him near the top of this list as he accumulates enough plate appearances that the system stops regressing his averages.

Here are the neural network picks:

• 0.324, 0.747 — Howie Kendrick batting against Tyler Mahle.
• 0.326, 0.733 — David Fletcher batting against Mike Leake.
• 0.301, 0.728 — Nolan Arenado batting against Edwin Jackson.
• 0.284, 0.725 — Michael Brantley batting against Michael Fiers.
• 0.298, 0.720 — Javier Baez batting against Miles Mikolas.
• 0.307, 0.719 — Anthony Rendon batting against Tyler Mahle.
• 0.287, 0.715 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Edwin Jackson.
• 0.272, 0.714 — Jean Segura batting against Kenta Maeda.
• 0.312, 0.713 — Tommy La Stella batting against Mike Leake.
• 0.296, 0.711 — Cody Bellinger batting against Jake Arrieta.

Kendrick and Fletcher are tied for consensus first pick.

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