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:

• 0.331 — Hanser Alberto batting against Michael Wacha.
• 0.330 — Jose Iglesias batting against Michael Wacha.
• 0.315 — Donovan Solano batting against Kyle Freeland.
• 0.310 — Trea Turner batting against Zack Wheeler.
• 0.299 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Charlie Morton.
• 0.296 — Wilmer Flores batting against Kyle Freeland.
• 0.294 — Alex Verdugo batting against Robert Erlin.
• 0.294 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Logan Webb.
• 0.292 — Howie Kendrick batting against Zack Wheeler.
• 0.292 — Tim Anderson batting against Jose Berrios.
• 0.292 — Victor Reyes batting against Adrian Houser.

Iglesias’s probability of hitting .400 remains high at 0.017, close to two percent. It looks like he would fall short of qualifying for the batting title, but could still get it if the gap between first and second was large enough. LeMahieu’s probability is even higher, at 0.0264. He probably does get enough plate appearances to qualify.

Here are the NN picks:

• 0.331, 0.750 — Hanser Alberto batting against Michael Wacha.
• 0.330, 0.745 — Jose Iglesias batting against Michael Wacha.
• 0.315, 0.733 — Donovan Solano batting against Kyle Freeland.
• 0.299, 0.732 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Charlie Morton.
• 0.294, 0.730 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Logan Webb.
• 0.310, 0.728 — Trea Turner batting against Zack Wheeler.
• 0.292, 0.726 — Tim Anderson batting against Jose Berrios.
• 0.292, 0.725 — Howie Kendrick batting against Zack Wheeler.
• 0.294, 0.716 — Alex Verdugo batting against Robert Erlin.
• 0.296, 0.712 — Wilmer Flores batting against Kyle Freeland.

It’s pretty much the same list in a slightly different order, but the two systems agree on Alberto and Iglesias as the top picks.

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!