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:
- 0.317 — Heliot Ramos batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.309 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Jonathan Cannon.
- 0.303 — Kevin Newman batting against Kyle Hendricks.
- 0.303 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Kyle Hendricks.
- 0.302 — Ketel Marte batting against Kyle Hendricks.
- 0.301 — Brett Wisely batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.301 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Brayan Bello.
- 0.300 — Patrick Bailey batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.300 — Randal Grichuk batting against Kyle Hendricks.
- 0.297 — Trea Turner batting against Luis Ortiz.
It looks like a good day for the Diamondbacks, and Hendricks allowed a .326 BABIP this season. Ramos will be playing in Colorado with a .373 BABIP this season.
Note that the Cardinals and Braves play a doubleheader, so be careful picking from those games.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.294, 0.739 — Luis Arraez batting against Gavin Williams.
- 0.297, 0.724 — Trea Turner batting against Luis Ortiz.
- 0.309, 0.721 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Jonathan Cannon.
- 0.275, 0.719 — Jose Iglesias batting against Roddery Munoz.
- 0.290, 0.711 — Jose Altuve batting against George Kirby.
- 0.301, 0.703 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Brayan Bello.
- 0.266, 0.703 — Steven Kwan batting against Dylan Cease.
- 0.286, 0.702 — Amed Rosario batting against Nestor Cortes.
- 0.291, 0.700 — Freddie Freeman batting against Brayan Bello.
- 0.317, 0.700 — Heliot Ramos batting against Kyle Freeland.
It’s quite a different list. It’s Witt both systems like, with Ramos edging out Turner 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!