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:
- 0.343 — Bo Bichette batting against Garrett Whitlock.
- 0.314 — Nick Castellanos batting against Trevor Williams.
- 0.308 — Freddie Freeman batting against Brady Singer.
- 0.298 — Josh Naylor batting against Jameson Taillon.
- 0.298 — Whit Merrifield batting against Garrett Whitlock.
- 0.296 — Austin Slater batting against David Peterson.
- 0.295 — Patrick Bailey batting against David Peterson.
- 0.293 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Garrett Whitlock.
- 0.292 — Jose Ramirez batting against Jameson Taillon.
- 0.292 — Corey Seager batting against Shawn Dubin.
Bichette may be the second best hitter to extend a streak this season. He owns a .354 BABIP, and while his 17.3% strikeout rate is not low, it’s not particularly high for this era. His walks are low, so his .347 OBP is made up mostly of hits.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.343, 0.750 — Bo Bichette batting against Garrett Whitlock.
- 0.277, 0.745 — Luis Arraez batting against Spencer Strider.
- 0.314, 0.727 — Nick Castellanos batting against Trevor Williams.
- 0.308, 0.724 — Freddie Freeman batting against Brady Singer.
- 0.290, 0.701 — Ezequiel Duran batting against Shawn Dubin.
- 0.292, 0.699 — Corey Seager batting against Shawn Dubin.
- 0.286, 0.698 — Luis Robert batting against Paul Blackburn.
- 0.266, 0.695 — Joey Meneses batting against Ranger Suarez.
- 0.289, 0.693 — Alec Bohm batting against Trevor Williams.
- 0.281, 0.693 — Trea Turner batting against Trevor Williams.
- 0.284, 0.693 — Andrew Benintendi batting against Paul Blackburn.
It takes Strider to knock Luis Arraez out of the top spot in the NN picks. Strider brings in a .187 hit average for this season, and a .175 mark since the start of 2021. Both are well below the league average of .221, so we would expect Arraez to be pulled down against this pitcher. Arraez and Strider never faced each other, so we’ll see how this works out. Bichette is two for eight with four strikeouts against Whitlock.
Bichette is the unanimous top pick, with Castellanos the consensus double down choice. Castellanos hits Williams well, 10 for 25 with two walks and two strikeouts. Lots of balls in play in that match-up.
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!