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:
- 0.317 — Brandon Nimmo batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.309 — Thairo Estrada batting against Bailey Falter.
- 0.309 — Jeff McNeil batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.302 — Joey Meneses batting against David Peterson.
- 0.298 — Starling Marte batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.291 — Bo Bichette batting against Jhony Brito.
- 0.284 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Drew Rucinski.
- 0.283 — Donovan Solano batting against Noah Syndergaard.
- 0.283 — Luis Guillorme batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.281 — J.D. Davis batting against Bailey Falter.
The Mets and Nationals play a 4 PM EDT game, so get your picks in early against Corbin. Corbin walks and strikes out few batters, and plenty of balls in play against him fall for hits.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.291, 0.715 — Bo Bichette batting against Jhony Brito.
- 0.309, 0.712 — Jeff McNeil batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.317, 0.708 — Brandon Nimmo batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.302, 0.707 — Joey Meneses batting against David Peterson.
- 0.309, 0.707 — Thairo Estrada batting against Bailey Falter.
- 0.278, 0.701 — Nick Castellanos batting against Alex Wood.
- 0.298, 0.698 — Starling Marte batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.284, 0.697 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Drew Rucinski.
- 0.276, 0.693 — Alex Verdugo batting against George Kirby.
- 0.280, 0.690 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Grayson Rodriguez.
- 0.262, 0.690 — Trea Turner batting against Alex Wood.
With a .320 BA and a .365 OBP, Bichette gets on via hits much more than walks, making him a good candidate for extending streaks. Nimmo gets the nod as the consensus first pick, with his teammate McNeil the consensus double down 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!