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:
- 0.332 — Salvador Perez batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.322 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.306 — Harold Ramirez batting against Kyle Muller.
- 0.303 — Amed Rosario batting against Kyle Muller.
- 0.296 — Freddy Fermin batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.294 — Maikel Garcia batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.294 — William Contreras batting against Jameson Taillon.
- 0.290 — Connor Wong batting against Jack Flaherty.
- 0.289 — Garrett Hampson batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.287 — Julio Rodriguez batting against Spencer Arrighetti.
It looks like a good day for the Royals against Paddack. He gave up a high BABIP in each of the last three seasons.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.306, 0.720 — Harold Ramirez batting against Kyle Muller.
- 0.332, 0.719 — Salvador Perez batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.322, 0.710 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Chris Paddack.
- 0.303, 0.707 — Amed Rosario batting against Kyle Muller.
- 0.294, 0.704 — William Contreras batting against Jameson Taillon.
- 0.290, 0.688 — Connor Wong batting against Jack Flaherty.
- 0.282, 0.687 — Yandy Diaz batting against Kyle Muller.
- 0.267, 0.686 — Michael Harris II batting against Trevor Williams.
- 0.264, 0.682 — Luis Rengifo batting against Carlos Rodon.
- 0.287, 0.680 — Julio Rodriguez batting against Spencer Arrighetti.
Note that three batters not on the list currently work on long hit streaks. Anthony Volpe of the Yankees extended his streak to 21 games on Wednesday, with Masyn Winn right behind him at 18 and J.T. Realmuto at 17. Note that all of them are hitting for power during their streaks.
Perez is the consensus top pick, with Ramirez the consensus double down choice.