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:
- 0.333 — Luis Arraez batting against Osvaldo Bido.
- 0.318 — Nico Hoerner batting against Adam Wainwright.
- 0.316 — Orlando Arcia batting against Graham Ashcraft.
- 0.311 — Ronald Acuna batting against Graham Ashcraft.
- 0.295 — Ty France batting against Dean Kremer.
- 0.291 — Freddie Freeman batting against Ronel Blanco.
- 0.290 — Teoscar Hernandez batting against Dean Kremer.
- 0.289 — Yan Gomes batting against Adam Wainwright.
- 0.289 — Harold Ramirez batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.289 — Dansby Swanson batting against Adam Wainwright.
There are lots of Cubs on the list due to Wainwright being very hittable this season. The game will be in London, and the last games in London did produce a lot of runs.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.333, 0.778 — Luis Arraez batting against Osvaldo Bido.
- 0.316, 0.719 — Orlando Arcia batting against Graham Ashcraft.
- 0.311, 0.716 — Ronald Acuna batting against Graham Ashcraft.
- 0.318, 0.714 — Nico Hoerner batting against Adam Wainwright.
- 0.289, 0.713 — Harold Ramirez batting against Jordan Lyles.
- 0.269, 0.712 — Bo Bichette batting against Hogan Harris.
- 0.291, 0.711 — Freddie Freeman batting against Ronel Blanco.
- 0.275, 0.702 — Joey Meneses batting against Matthew Waldron.
- 0.286, 0.697 — Alex Verdugo batting against Lance Lynn.
- 0.295, 0.694 — Ty France batting against Dean Kremer.
The Cubs don’t do quite as well here, with Arcia the consensus double down pick to Arraez’s huge probability. The only worry about Arcia is that he bats low in the Braves order, so he doesn’t get as many opportunities to get a hit.
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!