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:
- 0.334 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Ryne Nelson.
- 0.330 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Zack Littell.
- 0.329 — Steven Kwan batting against Chris Flexen.
- 0.328 — Freddie Freeman batting against Ryne Nelson.
- 0.316 — Christian Yelich batting against Ryan Feltner.
- 0.315 — William Contreras batting against Ryan Feltner.
- 0.315 — Miguel Rojas batting against Ryne Nelson.
- 0.310 — Elias Diaz batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.306 — Freddy Fermin batting against Zack Littell.
- 0.303 — Salvador Perez batting against Zack Littell.
- 0.303 — Brendan Rodgers batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.303 — Luis Rengifo batting against Mitch Spence.
Note that part of Ohtani hitting for a high average this season is that he cut down on his strikeouts. For his career, Ohtani struck out in 25.6% of his PA. This season it’s down to 20.3%.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.329, 0.741 — Steven Kwan batting against Chris Flexen.
- 0.285, 0.738 — Luis Arraez batting against Nathan Eovaldi.
- 0.330, 0.727 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Zack Littell.
- 0.328, 0.724 — Freddie Freeman batting against Ryne Nelson.
- 0.334, 0.720 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Ryne Nelson.
- 0.315, 0.715 — William Contreras batting against Ryan Feltner.
- 0.310, 0.715 — Elias Diaz batting against Dallas Keuchel.
- 0.284, 0.711 — Jose Iglesias batting against DJ Herz.
- 0.316, 0.709 — Christian Yelich batting against Ryan Feltner.
- 0.303, 0.709 — Brendan Rodgers batting against Dallas Keuchel.
Eovaldi is one of the few pitchers tough enough to knock Arraez off the top of the list. Kwan, like Ohtani, took his K rate lower this season, although it was already pretty low.
Kwan is the consensus top pick, with Witt 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!