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.
The Log5 Method yields these top picks:
- 0.310 — Andrew Benintendi batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.296 — Tim Anderson batting against Daniel Lynch.
- 0.293 — Nicky Lopez batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.291 — Salvador Perez batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.289 — Randal Grichuk batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.289 — Michael Brantley batting against Taylor Hearn.
- 0.288 — Jose Iglesias batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.285 — Nathaniel Lowe batting against Jake Odorizzi.
- 0.282 — Yonathan Daza batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.282 — Trea Turner batting against Zach Davies.
- 0.282 — Luis Arraez batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
Benintendi struck out just eight times in 53 PA this season. With a .388 BA, he’s hitting the ball with authority.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.296, 0.714 — Tim Anderson batting against Daniel Lynch.
- 0.282, 0.708 — Trea Turner batting against Zach Davies.
- 0.289, 0.700 — Michael Brantley batting against Taylor Hearn.
- 0.310, 0.697 — Andrew Benintendi batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.282, 0.691 — Luis Arraez batting against Eduardo Rodriguez.
- 0.288, 0.685 — Jose Iglesias batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.281, 0.682 — Nick Castellanos batting against German Marquez.
- 0.278, 0.682 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.291, 0.679 — Salvador Perez batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.273, 0.678 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Nick Pivetta.
Once again, watch for Anderson having to serve his one-game suspension. He is the consensus top pick, with Benintendi the double down choice. Anderson’s .714 is the highest probability we’ve seen this season.
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!