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:
- 0.320 — Luis Arraez batting against Bryce Elder.
- 0.317 — William Contreras batting against Spencer Arrighetti.
- 0.314 — Andres Gimenez batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.312 — Jose Ramirez batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.305 — Josh Naylor batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.296 — Will Brennan batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.296 — David Fry batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.284 — Jose Altuve batting against Colin Rea.
- 0.284 — Alec Bohm batting against Trevor Williams.
- 0.283 — Jeremy Pena batting against Colin Rea.
Paddack, with an okay strikeout rate and a low walk rate allows a good amount of balls in play, and batters own a .387 BABIP against him. He also gave up seven homers in 42 1/3 innings. The Guardians batters as a group do not strike out much, so they are a very good match against the Twins starter.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of getting a hit in a game:
- 0.320, 0.751 — Luis Arraez batting against Bryce Elder.
- 0.317, 0.721 — William Contreras batting against Spencer Arrighetti.
- 0.284, 0.706 — Alec Bohm batting against Trevor Williams.
- 0.284, 0.702 — Jose Altuve batting against Colin Rea.
- 0.279, 0.692 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Jordan Montgomery.
- 0.283, 0.690 — Jeremy Pena batting against Colin Rea.
- 0.312, 0.689 — Jose Ramirez batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.305, 0.688 — Josh Naylor batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.314, 0.688 — Andres Gimenez batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.258, 0.687 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Hunter Greene.
The Padres and Braves were rained out on Saturday, so Arraez gets his .751 probability again. Elder doesn’t strike out many batters, so he plays into the hands of Arraez, who is great at putting the bat on the ball. Arraez and Contreras are the unanimous double down 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!