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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:
- 0.278 — Seiya Suzuki batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.278 — Nico Hoerner batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.276 — Christopher Morel batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.275 — Cody Bellinger batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.272 — Nick Madrigal batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.271 — Garrett Cooper batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.270 — Ian Happ batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.267 — Dansby Swanson batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.267 — Luis Campusano batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.267 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Miles Mikolas.
Hoerner often ranked high in the Beat the Streak picks last season. For his career, Hoerner owns a high BA without a lot of walks or strikeouts. Suzuki tends to walk and strikeout more than Hoerner, so when I see a tie like this, I would tend to pick Hoerner. Notice, however, that this ranking as more to do with Freeland being very hittable.
Here are the NN picks:
- 0.262, 0.709 — Luis Arraez batting against Tyler Anderson.
- 0.264, 0.694 — Freddie Freeman batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.255, 0.683 — Michael Harris II batting against Garrett Crochet.
- 0.263, 0.681 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Adrian Houser.
- 0.262, 0.681 — Jose Altuve batting against Jose Berrios.
- 0.252, 0.680 — Ronald Acuna batting against Garrett Crochet.
- 0.278, 0.678 — Nico Hoerner batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.267, 0.676 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.278, 0.674 — Seiya Suzuki batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.260, 0.673 — Mookie Betts batting against Logan Webb.
One reason I like the NN is that it moderates extremes due to the starting pitcher. Note, two that the NN does a better job of recognizing Hoerner as the better of the two Cubs to extend a hit streak. The Cubs are the consensus double down choices.
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!