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:
- 0.352 — Luis Arraez batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.300 — Royce Lewis batting against Jose Urena.
- 0.289 — Donovan Solano batting against Jose Urena.
- 0.286 — Thairo Estrada batting against Chase Anderson.
- 0.284 — Corey Seager batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.281 — Masataka Yoshida batting against Clarke Schmidt.
- 0.280 — Wilmer Flores batting against Chase Anderson.
- 0.280 — Jon Berti batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.279 — Joey Meneses batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.273 — Bo Bichette batting against Nathan Eovaldi.
Arraez went two for four last night to bring his BA to .349, now with a 12 point lead in the NL batting race. I expected him to finish somewhere between .350 and .365, so he fell off much more than I thought he would.
The Yankees and Red Sox play a doubleheader today, so be careful picking from those games.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.352, 0.771 — Luis Arraez batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.273, 0.713 — Bo Bichette batting against Nathan Eovaldi.
- 0.284, 0.704 — Corey Seager batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.300, 0.700 — Royce Lewis batting against Jose Urena.
- 0.279, 0.699 — Joey Meneses batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.281, 0.698 — Masataka Yoshida batting against Clarke Schmidt.
- 0.260, 0.695 — Harold Ramirez batting against Kyle Bradish.
- 0.289, 0.693 — Donovan Solano batting against Jose Urena.
- 0.286, 0.687 — Thairo Estrada batting against Chase Anderson.
- 0.258, 0.687 — Yandy Diaz batting against Kyle Bradish.
Houser allowed a .288 BA this season with a low number of walks and strikeouts, and one would expect this to be a good match for Arraez’s talents. He’s the top choice, with Lewis the consensus double down pick. Lewis boosted the Twins offense when he took over at third base, with a .301/.354/.520 slash line in 52 games this season.
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!