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:

• 0.291 — Tim Anderson batting against Jon Lester.
• 0.290 — Hanser Alberto batting against Colten Brewer.
• 0.289 — Ketel Marte batting against Logan Webb.
• 0.286 — David Fletcher batting against Michael Fiers.
• 0.283 — Austin Romine batting against Adam Plutko.
• 0.280 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Walker Buehler.
• 0.276 — Victor Reyes batting against Adam Plutko.
• 0.274 — Mookie Betts batting against Jonathan Gray.
• 0.273 — Tommy La Stella batting against Michael Fiers.
• 0.272 — Anthony Rendon batting against Michael Fiers.
• 0.271 — Starling Marte batting against Logan Webb.

Anderson’s strikeouts are up a bit this season, but he appears to be hitting the ball harder as he’s maintaining a high batting average to go with his high slugging percentage. A higher strikeout rate with the same BABIP won’t hurt batting average if it is accompanied by more home runs, and Anderson is hitting long balls this season.

Here are the NN picks:

• 0.291, 0.727 — Tim Anderson batting against Jon Lester.
• 0.280, 0.725 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Walker Buehler.
• 0.290, 0.721 — Hanser Alberto batting against Colten Brewer.
• 0.289, 0.715 — Ketel Marte batting against Logan Webb.
• 0.265, 0.705 — Howie Kendrick batting against Daniel Castano.
• 0.268, 0.695 — Donovan Solano batting against Robbie Ray.
• 0.263, 0.688 — Whit Merrifield batting against Jake Odorizzi.
• 0.271, 0.688 — Starling Marte batting against Logan Webb.
• 0.259, 0.687 — Wilmer Flores batting against Robbie Ray.
• 0.286, 0.687 — David Fletcher batting against Michael Fiers.

Anderson tops this list as well, with Alberto the consensus second choice.

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!