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:
- 0.327 — Bo Bichette batting against Kyle Gibson.
- 0.322 — Freddie Freeman batting against Steven Matz.
- 0.316 — Luis Arraez batting against Anthony DeSclafani.
- 0.302 — Tim Anderson batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.302 — Kris Bryant batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.302 — Luis Robert batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.300 — Elias Diaz batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.298 — Andrew Benintendi batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.298 — Harold Ramirez batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.294 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Kyle Gibson.
Bichette is one for six against Gibson in his career, but he puts the ball in play, having struck out just once. Freeman is 10 for 33 against Matz with three walks and five strikeouts.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.316, 0.752 — Luis Arraez batting against Anthony DeSclafani.
- 0.327, 0.739 — Bo Bichette batting against Kyle Gibson.
- 0.322, 0.730 — Freddie Freeman batting against Steven Matz.
- 0.302, 0.719 — Tim Anderson batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.298, 0.715 — Harold Ramirez batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.302, 0.712 — Luis Robert batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.298, 0.703 — Andrew Benintendi batting against Zack Greinke.
- 0.287, 0.701 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Johan Oviedo.
- 0.280, 0.701 — Joey Meneses batting against Matt Boyd.
- 0.302, 0.697 — Kris Bryant batting against Martin Perez.
Arraez, due to his great long term and short term hit averages still ranks far and above everyone else in terms of probability of getting a hit in a game. Bichette is the consensus first pick, Arraez the consensus double down.
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!