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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:
- 0.304 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.298 — Ketel Marte batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.294 — Randal Grichuk batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.291 — Jake McCarthy batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.284 — Corbin Carroll batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.283 — Joc Pederson batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.283 — Gabriel Moreno batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.282 — Kevin Newman batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.281 — Freddie Freeman batting against Bailey Ober.
- 0.278 — Christian Walker batting against Kyle Freeland.
It’s pick a Diamondbacks batter day, as Kyle Freeland is a low strikeout pitcher going against a team that strikes out very little. Not the Log5 method does not adjust for the park, and this game is at Coors Field.
Here are the NN picks:
Update: The Dodgers and Twins game is not being picked up by the software correctly here. I’m working on it.
Update: This is the correct list. It does not change much.
- 0.268, 0.705 — Luis Arraez batting against Nestor Cortes.
- 0.281, 0.698 — Freddie Freeman batting against Bailey Ober.
- 0.304, 0.697 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.274, 0.688 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Mitch Keller.
- 0.261, 0.684 — Michael Harris II batting against Julio Teheran.
- 0.294, 0.683 — Randal Grichuk batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.298, 0.682 — Ketel Marte batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.260, 0.681 — Jose Altuve batting against Andrew Heaney.
- 0.291, 0.675 — Jake McCarthy batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.250, 0.674 — Harold Ramirez batting against Tyler Anderson.
Plenty of Diamondbacks do make the cut, and the NN does take into account the park. Arraez saw his probability of a hit go up after a big day on Sunday. Freeman, the only non-Arizona player to crack the Log5 top ten ranks second here.
Gurriel is the consensus top pick, with Grichuk the consensus double down choice.
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!