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:

• 0.343 — Freddie Freeman batting against Rick Porcello.
• 0.331 — Travis D’Arnaud batting against Rick Porcello.
• 0.319 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Rick Porcello.
• 0.317 — Michael Brantley batting against Madison Bumgarner.
• 0.314 — Jose Iglesias batting against Ryan Yarbrough.
• 0.310 — Tim Anderson batting against Michael Lorenzen.
• 0.308 — Corey Seager batting against Antonio Senzatela.
• 0.306 — Jeff McNeil batting against Kyle Wright.
• 0.302 — Mookie Betts batting against Antonio Senzatela.
• 0.301 — Ozzie Albies batting against Rick Porcello.
• 0.301 — Nick Markakis batting against Rick Porcello.

These picks represent more of a poor performance by Porcello in 2020 than the abilities of the Braves hitters. The BABIP against Porcello this season stands at .377. He owns low walk, home run, and K rates, so the problem is lots of balls in play finding holes. It’s not helped by a higher line drive rate than usual, but his STATCAST data seems pretty much in line with his previous seasons.

Here are the NN picks:

• 0.310, 0.751 — Tim Anderson batting against Michael Lorenzen.
• 0.300, 0.744 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Tanner Houck.
• 0.314, 0.738 — Jose Iglesias batting against Ryan Yarbrough.
• 0.343, 0.734 — Freddie Freeman batting against Rick Porcello.
• 0.306, 0.727 — Jeff McNeil batting against Kyle Wright.
• 0.317, 0.725 — Michael Brantley batting against Madison Bumgarner.
• 0.291, 0.721 — Donovan Solano batting against Mike Minor.
• 0.308, 0.720 — Corey Seager batting against Antonio Senzatela.
• 0.302, 0.717 — Mookie Betts batting against Antonio Senzatela.
• 0.283, 0.716 — Alex Verdugo batting against Deivi Garcia.

The NN smooths out the career blip by Porcello better. Just Freddie Freeman makes the cut now, with the two leading hitters in the AL at the top of the list. It’s quite the batting title race as LeMahieu leads Anderson .368 to .366. Note that Jose Iglesias left the game early yesterday after being hit by a pitch on the left wrist.

Freeman is the consensus first pick, with Anderson the consensus double down pick.

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!