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:
- 0.329 — Luis Arraez batting against Jake Irvin.
- 0.308 — Joey Meneses batting against Braxton Garrett.
- 0.308 — T.J. Friedl batting against Brandon Bielak.
- 0.306 — Matt McLain batting against Brandon Bielak.
- 0.306 — Jeff McNeil batting against Adam Wainwright.
- 0.300 — Starling Marte batting against Adam Wainwright.
- 0.295 — Bo Bichette batting against Dane Dunning.
- 0.293 — Orlando Arcia batting against Connor Seabold.
- 0.292 — Ronald Acuna batting against Connor Seabold.
- 0.291 — Brandon Nimmo batting against Adam Wainwright.
With the Marlins playing at Washington, you can double down with the top two picks here in one game. Both these pitchers walk a ton of batters, however, which reduces balls in play somewhat.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.329, 0.771 — Luis Arraez batting against Jake Irvin.
- 0.295, 0.729 — Bo Bichette batting against Dane Dunning.
- 0.308, 0.727 — Joey Meneses batting against Braxton Garrett.
- 0.289, 0.713 — Freddie Freeman batting against Alex Wood.
- 0.286, 0.706 — Nick Castellanos batting against James Kaprielian.
- 0.306, 0.703 — Jeff McNeil batting against Adam Wainwright.
- 0.292, 0.702 — Ronald Acuna batting against Connor Seabold.
- 0.293, 0.701 — Orlando Arcia batting against Connor Seabold.
- 0.290, 0.700 — Alex Verdugo batting against Clarke Schmidt.
- 0.300, 0.696 — Starling Marte batting against Adam Wainwright.
Once again, the probability of Arraez getting a hit swamps everyone else.
One strategy of playing Beat the Streak is, “Survive until tomorrow.” If you choose just Arraez, there is a 77% chance of having your streak alive tomorrow morning. If you Arraez and Bichette, there is a .56% chance of surviving until tomorrow, but in the long run you need one less day to survive.
What if Arraez doesn’t start today? Doubling down on Bichette and Meneses gives you one a 53% chance of staying alive.
My own strategy tends to be to double down more often when the streak is not very long, mostly in the first ten days. There will be days later when the probabilities look so good I do go for it. Meneses is the consensus double down pick today.
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!