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 projected hit averages against starting pitchers:
- 0.340 — Gio Urshela batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.318 — Matt Vierling batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.306 — Andy Ibanez batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.303 — Luis Garcia batting against Casey Mize.
- 0.296 — Luis Rengifo batting against Brandon Pfaadt.
- 0.296 — Wenceel Perez batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.294 — Riley Greene batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.293 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Cole Irvin.
- 0.285 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Nestor Cortes.
- 0.283 — Ildemaro Vargas batting against Casey Mize.
Once again, Corbin makes everyone a good hitter. Note that both Urshela and Vierling are fairly high average, low OBP hitters, so they tend to post hit averages closer to their batting averages.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.340, 0.732 — Gio Urshela batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.296, 0.703 — Luis Rengifo batting against Brandon Pfaadt.
- 0.285, 0.700 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Nestor Cortes.
- 0.318, 0.694 — Matt Vierling batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.267, 0.692 — Harold Ramirez batting against Justin Steele.
- 0.303, 0.692 — Luis Garcia batting against Casey Mize.
- 0.293, 0.692 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Cole Irvin.
- 0.274, 0.691 — Amed Rosario batting against Justin Steele.
- 0.306, 0.684 — Andy Ibanez batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.253, 0.678 — Jose Iglesias batting against Roddery Munoz.
The two system agree on Urshela as the best bet for extending a streak. The consensus double down pick goes to Vierling. The Nationals at the Tigers kicks off at 1 PM EDT, so get your picks in early if you go that route.
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!