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:
- 0.300 — Christian Yelich batting against Austin Gomber.
- 0.298 — William Contreras batting against Austin Gomber.
- 0.295 — Jose Iglesias batting against MacKenzie Gore.
- 0.288 — Jose Altuve batting against Yariel Rodriguez.
- 0.281 — Harold Ramirez batting against David Peterson.
- 0.281 — Brice Turang batting against Austin Gomber.
- 0.278 — Mauricio Dubon batting against Yariel Rodriguez.
- 0.275 — Yainer Diaz batting against Yariel Rodriguez.
- 0.269 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Hunter Brown.
- 0.268 — Isiah Kiner-Falefa batting against Hunter Brown.
- 0.268 — Sal Frelick batting against Austin Gomber.
Here are the Brewers batters. While his power isn’t all the way back, Yelich is hitting closer to his 2018-2019 peak than any recent season. Contreras fell off quite a bit from his early season surge.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.295, 0.719 — Jose Iglesias batting against MacKenzie Gore.
- 0.288, 0.708 — Jose Altuve batting against Yariel Rodriguez.
- 0.281, 0.706 — Harold Ramirez batting against David Peterson.
- 0.298, 0.706 — William Contreras batting against Austin Gomber.
- 0.300, 0.702 — Christian Yelich batting against Austin Gomber.
- 0.275, 0.689 — Yainer Diaz batting against Yariel Rodriguez.
- 0.278, 0.688 — Mauricio Dubon batting against Yariel Rodriguez.
- 0.262, 0.679 — Elias Diaz batting against Bryse Wilson.
- 0.256, 0.673 — Ezequiel Tovar batting against Bryse Wilson.
- 0.281, 0.673 — Brice Turang batting against Austin Gomber.
The NN and I tend to disagree on Iglesias. He tends to bat way down in the batting order, meaning he’s unlikely to get the extra plate appearance that gives him a better chance of recording a hit. He is the consensus top pick, with Altuve, Contreras, and Yelich all tied for the consensus double down choice.
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!