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:
- 0.331 — Luis Arraez batting against Kyle Bradish.
- 0.303 — Harold Ramirez batting against Brady Singer.
- 0.298 — Josh Naylor batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.295 — Bo Bichette batting against Tommy Henry.
- 0.291 — Elly De La Cruz batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.288 — Matt McLain batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.287 — Nick Castellanos batting against Seth Lugo.
- 0.287 — T.J. Friedl batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.285 — Wander Franco batting against Brady Singer.
- 0.285 — Bryson Stott batting against Seth Lugo.
Elly De La Cruz makes his first appearance on a Beat the Streak List. He owns a high BA with low walk rate, so most of his ability to get on base comes from his hits. He strikes out a lot, however, but makes up for it with a .420 BABIP. That is a high number, but likely unsustainable. I suspect his strikeout will need to come down a bit if he is going to continue to hit .300.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.331, 0.775 — Luis Arraez batting against Kyle Bradish.
- 0.295, 0.729 — Bo Bichette batting against Tommy Henry.
- 0.303, 0.715 — Harold Ramirez batting against Brady Singer.
- 0.282, 0.708 — Joey Meneses batting against Jack Flaherty.
- 0.298, 0.700 — Josh Naylor batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.287, 0.700 — Nick Castellanos batting against Seth Lugo.
- 0.275, 0.698 — Corey Seager batting against Tanner Bibee.
- 0.271, 0.695 — Freddie Freeman batting against Max Scherzer.
- 0.285, 0.689 — Bryson Stott batting against Seth Lugo.
- 0.282, 0.689 — Amed Rosario batting against Martin Perez.
Arraez continues to top both lists by a wide margin. Harold Ramirez becomes the double down choice. It’s also tough to go wrong with Bo Bichette. There are not many active long streaks at the moment, especially from this group.
Note that the weather on the east coast today is very bad, so the games in Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore could be delayed or postponed.
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!