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:
- 0.311 — Jose Iglesias batting against Mitch Spence.
- 0.288 — Jarren Duran batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.282 — Masataka Yoshida batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.282 — Rafael Devers batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.282 — Connor Wong batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.279 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.278 — Trea Turner batting against Mitchell Parker.
- 0.276 — Rob Refsnyder batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.272 — Alec Bohm batting against Mitchell Parker.
- 0.272 — Jose Miranda batting against Cody Bradford.
It looks like a good day for the Red Sox as Eflin brings both a low K rate and a low strikeout rate into the game. Duran owns a .358 BABIP.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.311, 0.734 — Jose Iglesias batting against Mitch Spence.
- 0.288, 0.695 — Jarren Duran batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.278, 0.694 — Trea Turner batting against Mitchell Parker.
- 0.272, 0.694 — Jose Miranda batting against Cody Bradford.
- 0.266, 0.693 — Amed Rosario batting against Tobias Myers.
- 0.282, 0.691 — Masataka Yoshida batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.272, 0.687 — Alec Bohm batting against Mitchell Parker.
- 0.282, 0.685 — Rafael Devers batting against Zach Eflin.
- 0.279, 0.681 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.282, 0.679 — Connor Wong batting against Zach Eflin.
It’s a unanimous Iglesias-Duran double down.
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!