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 project hit averages against starting pitchers:
- 0.344 — Christian Yelich batting against Randy Vasquez.
- 0.342 — William Contreras batting against Randy Vasquez.
- 0.321 — Trea Turner batting against Tommy Henry.
- 0.320 — Steven Kwan batting against Jose Berrios.
- 0.319 — Luis Arraez batting against Carlos Rodriguez.
- 0.316 — Brice Turang batting against Randy Vasquez.
- 0.301 — Alec Bohm batting against Tommy Henry.
- 0.296 — Jose Iglesias batting against Jameson Taillon.
- 0.296 — Sal Frelick batting against Randy Vasquez.
- 0.295 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Jon Gray.
The Brewers look good today as Vazquez owns both low strikeout and walk rates so batter put the ball in play against him. His opposition BABIP this season stands at .371.
The NN produces this list of batter with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.319, 0.752 — Luis Arraez batting against Carlos Rodriguez.
- 0.320, 0.738 — Steven Kwan batting against Jose Berrios.
- 0.321, 0.726 — Trea Turner batting against Tommy Henry.
- 0.342, 0.722 — William Contreras batting against Randy Vasquez.
- 0.296, 0.715 — Jose Iglesias batting against Jameson Taillon.
- 0.344, 0.714 — Christian Yelich batting against Randy Vasquez.
- 0.293, 0.706 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Zach Plesac.
- 0.295, 0.705 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Jon Gray.
- 0.284, 0.704 — Freddie Freeman batting against Zach Plesac.
- 0.301, 0.703 — Alec Bohm batting against Tommy Henry.
Kwan lost his hit streak on a base running mistake Friday.
There is some agreement between the two systems at that the top, with a different ordering. The Borda count on Arraez, Contreras, Kwan, and Turner all evaluate to six, so take your double down pick from those four. Kwan is four for seven against Berrios with no strikeouts.
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!