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:
- 0.321 — Trea Turner batting against Marco Gonzales.
- 0.318 — Jose Iglesias batting against Trevor Rogers.
- 0.310 — Luis Arraez batting against Ben Lively.
- 0.298 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.288 — Heliot Ramos batting against Ryan Feltner.
- 0.287 — Alec Bohm batting against Marco Gonzales.
- 0.277 — Bryce Harper batting against Marco Gonzales.
- 0.276 — Andy Ibanez batting against Kevin Gausman.
- 0.275 — Steven Kwan batting against Michael King.
- 0.275 — Austin Riley batting against Miles Mikolas.
Turner owns a .393 BABIP this season, .342 for his career. Ozuna owns an eight game hit streak.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.310, 0.750 — Luis Arraez batting against Ben Lively.
- 0.318, 0.747 — Jose Iglesias batting against Trevor Rogers.
- 0.321, 0.737 — Trea Turner batting against Marco Gonzales.
- 0.275, 0.705 — Steven Kwan batting against Michael King.
- 0.287, 0.696 — Alec Bohm batting against Marco Gonzales.
- 0.298, 0.695 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.261, 0.692 — Jose Altuve batting against Bryan Woo.
- 0.267, 0.691 — Amed Rosario batting against Marcus Stroman.
- 0.245, 0.691 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Andrew Thorpe.
- 0.250, 0.683 — Harold Ramirez batting against Andrew Abbott.
The NN flip the top three, putting Arraez at the top. So Arraez, Iglesias, and Turner all tie for the consensus pick of the day.
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!