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:
- 0.312 — Luis Arraez batting against Cristopher Sanchez.
- 0.312 — Corey Seager batting against Paul Blackburn.
- 0.298 — Thairo Estrada batting against Ty Blach.
- 0.296 — Harold Ramirez batting against George Kirby.
- 0.292 — Jeff McNeil batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.290 — Yandy Diaz batting against George Kirby.
- 0.289 — Wilmer Flores batting against Ty Blach.
- 0.288 — Freddie Freeman batting against MacKenzie Gore.
- 0.285 — Ronald Acuna batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.281 — Michael Harris II batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.281 — Ezequiel Duran batting against Paul Blackburn.
The two league batting average leaders come out on top. Arraez leads the NL with a .353 mark, Seager the AL with a .339 mark. Harris owns a ten-game hit streak, the longest of this group.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.312, 0.757 — Luis Arraez batting against Cristopher Sanchez.
- 0.288, 0.722 — Freddie Freeman batting against MacKenzie Gore.
- 0.312, 0.721 — Corey Seager batting against Paul Blackburn.
- 0.296, 0.715 — Harold Ramirez batting against George Kirby.
- 0.281, 0.710 — Michael Harris II batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.285, 0.709 — Ronald Acuna batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.290, 0.701 — Yandy Diaz batting against George Kirby.
- 0.292, 0.700 — Jeff McNeil batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.298, 0.692 — Thairo Estrada batting against Ty Blach.
- 0.268, 0.686 — Josh Naylor batting against Griffin Canning.
Freeman does much better in the NN, but Arraez and Seager remain the consensus 1-2 picks.
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!