For the past few 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.
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:
- 0.313 — Starling Marte batting against Daniel Lynch.
- 0.304 — Jean Segura batting against Kyle Hendricks.
- 0.301 — Luis Robert batting against Alex Cobb.
- 0.300 — Salvador Perez batting against Paul Blackburn.
- 0.299 — Tim Anderson batting against Alex Cobb.
- 0.297 — Whit Merrifield batting against Paul Blackburn.
- 0.293 — Hanser Alberto batting against Paul Blackburn.
- 0.292 — Buster Posey batting against Ryan Weathers.
- 0.290 — Nicky Lopez batting against Paul Blackburn.
- 0.288 — Josh Harrison batting against Daniel Lynch.
The Royals look to have a good day against Blackburn. He’s a low strikeout, low walk pitcher, and the Royals have a history of putting the ball in play. Two Oakland acquisitions look like they will do well, also.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.299, 0.737 — Tim Anderson batting against Alex Cobb.
- 0.313, 0.727 — Starling Marte batting against Daniel Lynch.
- 0.301, 0.721 — Luis Robert batting against Alex Cobb.
- 0.300, 0.710 — Salvador Perez batting against Paul Blackburn.
- 0.304, 0.709 — Jean Segura batting against Kyle Hendricks.
- 0.297, 0.706 — Whit Merrifield batting against Paul Blackburn.
- 0.293, 0.704 — Hanser Alberto batting against Paul Blackburn.
- 0.269, 0.696 — Nick Castellanos batting against Connor Overton.
- 0.278, 0.694 — Yulieski Gurriel batting against Glenn Otto Jr..
- 0.292, 0.693 — Buster Posey batting against Ryan Weathers.
Anderson is back from the illjured list, but he did not start Wednesday night, so keep an eye on the pre-game line up if you pick him. Marte is the consensus first pick, with Robert second. Perez is red hot and may wind up winning two legs of the triple crown.
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!
Hi. Do you know of anyone who has a stat on how many games a player gets a hit? Batting average or how many hits in a game don’t matter, just how many individual games a player gets a hit. Thanks!
If you go to the batting log for a particular player in the Day by Day Database, the summary lists percentage of games with a hit.
Here’s Tim Anderson:
Thanks, that’s helpful. Is there a way to see a ranking of players by that stat?
I just posted a list.
@David Pinto: Where do I find the list? I’ve poked around but haven’t seen it. Thanks!