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:
- 0.342 — Salvador Perez batting against Ross Stripling.
- 0.330 — Connor Wong batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.326 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Graham Ashcraft.
- 0.324 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Ross Stripling.
- 0.321 — Luis Arraez batting against Bryce Elder.
- 0.313 — Mookie Betts batting against Graham Ashcraft.
- 0.312 — Alec Bohm batting against MacKenzie Gore.
- 0.310 — Jarren Duran batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.309 — Amed Rosario batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.305 — Rafael Devers batting against Miles Mikolas.
Two catchers at the top of the list, and William Contreras doesn’t make the top ten. Perez cut way down on his strikeouts while increasing his BABIP. The result is a .323 BA.
The NN produced this list of batters with a high probability of getting a hit in the game:
- 0.321, 0.751 — Luis Arraez batting against Bryce Elder.
- 0.326, 0.726 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Graham Ashcraft.
- 0.342, 0.725 — Salvador Perez batting against Ross Stripling.
- 0.312, 0.713 — Alec Bohm batting against MacKenzie Gore.
- 0.313, 0.713 — Mookie Betts batting against Graham Ashcraft.
- 0.303, 0.710 — Harold Ramirez batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.330, 0.709 — Connor Wong batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.324, 0.708 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Ross Stripling.
- 0.309, 0.705 — Amed Rosario batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.291, 0.700 — Freddie Freeman batting against Graham Ashcraft.
As batters near 200 PA for the season, the regression to the .214 MLB hit average disappears for the in season parameter. That’s why the NN produces more .700 probabilities. Arraez tops this list, but Perez and Ohtani come in as 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!