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 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Jose Quintana.
- 0.298 — Luis Arraez batting against Jesus Luzardo.
- 0.298 — Mookie Betts batting against Jose Quintana.
- 0.292 — Julio Rodriguez batting against Hunter Brown.
- 0.292 — Abraham Toro-Hernandez batting against Zack Littell.
- 0.290 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Tylor Megill.
- 0.289 — Jose Ramirez batting against Ryan Feltner.
- 0.285 — Mookie Betts batting against Tylor Megill.
- 0.283 — Thomas Pham batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.282 — Andres Gimenez batting against Ryan Feltner.
The Mets and Dodgers play what used to call a twi-night double header, single admission starting at 4PM EDT. You can double down on Shohei Ohtani or Mookie Betts! MLB.com shows Quintana starting game two. Always be careful when picking from a doubleheader, as some hitters often get one of the games off.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.298, 0.750 — Luis Arraez batting against Jesus Luzardo.
- 0.304, 0.707 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Jose Quintana.
- 0.290, 0.704 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Tylor Megill.
- 0.298, 0.702 — Mookie Betts batting against Jose Quintana.
- 0.285, 0.698 — Mookie Betts batting against Tylor Megill.
- 0.281, 0.695 — Alec Bohm batting against Spencer Howard.
- 0.272, 0.694 — Harold Ramirez batting against Mitch Spence.
- 0.268, 0.690 — William Contreras batting against Ben Brown.
- 0.278, 0.690 — Freddie Freeman batting against Jose Quintana.
- 0.271, 0.687 — Jose Altuve batting against Luis Castillo.
Arraez offers the only really high probability on the day. He and Ohtani against Quintana tie for the consensus top pick. If you want to go in another direction, Anthony Volpe of the Yankees looks to extend his hit streak to 20 games.
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!