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:
- 0.338 — Trea Turner batting against Carlos Carrasco.
- 0.308 — Alec Bohm batting against Carlos Carrasco.
- 0.306 — Jake Fraley batting against Zack Littell.
- 0.302 — Jose Iglesias batting against Spencer Schwellenbach.
- 0.298 — Luis Rengifo batting against Mitch Spence.
- 0.298 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Shota Imanaga.
- 0.291 — Bryce Harper batting against Carlos Carrasco.
- 0.290 — Heliot Ramos batting against Ryan Feltner.
- 0.288 — Steven Kwan batting against Tyler Phillips.
- 0.288 — Edmundo Sosa batting against Carlos Carrasco.
Carrasco is a low walk, low strikeout pitcher, so a Turner and Bohm double down looks pretty good today. Turner is 8 for 13 in his career against Carrasco with one walk and two strikeouts no walks and no strikeouts.
Note that the Rockies and Giants play a doubleheader on Saturday, so be careful picking from those games.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.338, 0.743 — Trea Turner batting against Carlos Carrasco.
- 0.284, 0.738 — Luis Arraez batting against Dean Kremer.
- 0.302, 0.733 — Jose Iglesias batting against Spencer Schwellenbach.
- 0.298, 0.723 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Shota Imanaga.
- 0.288, 0.710 — Steven Kwan batting against Tyler Phillips.
- 0.282, 0.709 — Jose Altuve batting against Justin Wrobleski.
- 0.308, 0.709 — Alec Bohm batting against Carlos Carrasco.
- 0.278, 0.703 — Harold Ramirez batting against Kyle Gibson.
- 0.298, 0.703 — Luis Rengifo batting against Mitch Spence.
- 0.265, 0.692 — Amed Rosario batting against Andrew Abbott.
The two systems are unanimous on Turner, with Iglesias the consensus double down pick. Both Arraez and Witt are working on short-term hit streaks.
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!