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:
- 0.334 — Ronald Acuna batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.323 — Michael Harris II batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.322 — Luis Arraez batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.311 — Freddie Freeman batting against Brandon Pfaadt.
- 0.311 — Whit Merrifield batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.301 — Orlando Arcia batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.299 — Austin Riley batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.297 — Davis Schneider batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.293 — Corey Seager batting against Denyi Reyes.
- 0.293 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Patrick Corbin.
It always seems to be a good day for teams when Freeland and Corbin pitch. Rookie Schneider makes the cut as he is hitting .422/.509/.911 in his first thirteen games. He does strikeout a lot, so we’ll see how long he can sustain those numbers. He hit .275/.416/.553 at Buffalo this season.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.322, 0.760 — Luis Arraez batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.334, 0.739 — Ronald Acuna batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.323, 0.733 — Michael Harris II batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.311, 0.733 — Freddie Freeman batting against Brandon Pfaadt.
- 0.311, 0.708 — Whit Merrifield batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.293, 0.704 — Corey Seager batting against Denyi Reyes.
- 0.275, 0.701 — Harold Ramirez batting against Jesus Luzardo.
- 0.299, 0.699 — Austin Riley batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.301, 0.697 — Orlando Arcia batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.277, 0.697 — Yandy Diaz batting against Jesus Luzardo.
There’s very good agreement among the two systems today, with Acuna the consensus top pick and Arraez the consensus double down choice. The two are now separated by 15 points in the NL Batting Race, with Freeman in second place two points ahead of Acuna.
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!