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 hit averages against starting pitchers:
- 0.325 — Starling Marte batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.323 — Jose Iglesias batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.316 — J.D. Martinez batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.316 — Jose Altuve batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.314 — Jeremy Pena batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.310 — Harrison Bader batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.305 — Mauricio Dubon batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.303 — Mark Vientos batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.299 — Yordan Alvarez batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.297 — Juan Soto batting against Chris Paddack.
It’s a good day to be on the Mets or the Astros as they face pitchers with high hit rates. Over the years of Beat the Streak picks, Marte and Iglesias have often come up in the top ten, as both are capable of produce relatively high BA with relatively low OBPs.
The NN generates this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.281, 0.741 — Luis Arraez batting against Jose Soriano.
- 0.323, 0.720 — Jose Iglesias batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.316, 0.717 — Jose Altuve batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.325, 0.709 — Starling Marte batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.314, 0.706 — Jeremy Pena batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.289, 0.705 — Amed Rosario batting against Braxton Garrett.
- 0.279, 0.704 — Harold Ramirez batting against Braxton Garrett.
- 0.281, 0.703 — Steven Kwan batting against Brady Singer.
- 0.305, 0.700 — Mauricio Dubon batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.316, 0.700 — J.D. Martinez batting against Patrick Corbin.
Facing Corbin and Mikolas is not enough to dislodge Arraez from the top slot. He did play on Tuesday after his Sunday injury, but ended his hit streak.
Iglesias stands as the consensus top pick, with Marte the double down choice. Marte does hit Corbin well, but with a high K rate.
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!