For the past few years Baseball Musings tried to help with playing Beat the Streak. MLB is not offering the game during the short 2020 season, but people indicated they can still use the data. 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.

Here are the Log5 Method picks:

• 0.278 — Hanser Alberto batting against Pablo Lopez.
• 0.276 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Jake Arrieta.
• 0.273 — J.D. Martinez batting against Michael Wacha.
• 0.272 — Nick Castellanos batting against Jon Lester.
• 0.272 — Victor Reyes batting against Michael Montgomery.
• 0.271 — Jose Iglesias batting against Pablo Lopez.
• 0.269 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Jake Arrieta.
• 0.266 — Austin Romine batting against Michael Montgomery.
• 0.264 — Harold Castro batting against Michael Montgomery.
• 0.263 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Michael Wacha.

Alberto 2019 season dominates this calculation, although his hot start in 2020 helps. In 2019, he was a high BA, low, OBP hitter, with a partial slash line of .305/.329. He also struck out just 50 times in 524 at bats. If one were to build a hit streak player from scratch, Alberto would be it.

Here are the NN picks:

• 0.278, 0.700 — Hanser Alberto batting against Pablo Lopez.
• 0.276, 0.694 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Jake Arrieta.
• 0.261, 0.685 — Howie Kendrick batting against Trent Thornton.
• 0.273, 0.685 — J.D. Martinez batting against Michael Wacha.
• 0.271, 0.682 — Jose Iglesias batting against Pablo Lopez.
• 0.269, 0.681 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Jake Arrieta.
• 0.261, 0.679 — Michael Brantley batting against Kendall Graveman.
• 0.272, 0.679 — Nick Castellanos batting against Jon Lester.
• 0.255, 0.674 — Corey Dickerson batting against Asher Wojciechowski.
• 0.257, 0.673 — Whit Merrifield batting against Michael Fulmer.
• 0.272, 0.673 — Victor Reyes batting against Michael Montgomery.

The NN agrees on the top two slots, with LeMahieu the unanimous second choice. Notice that the NN brings Howie Kendrick high on the list, while the Log5 Method ignores him.

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!