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:
- 0.329 — Jose Iglesias batting against Cristopher Sanchez.
- 0.321 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Mason Black.
- 0.309 — Miguel Rojas batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.308 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Tyler Alexander.
- 0.307 — Mookie Betts batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.306 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.303 — Freddie Freeman batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.293 — Tommy Edman batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.293 — Luis Arraez batting against Garrett Crochet.
- 0.292 — Teoscar Hernandez batting against Kyle Freeland.
It looks like another good night for the Dodgers as they come home to face the Rockies. In the last three seasons, Freeland is pretty even home and road. In his career, he handled Betts and Freeman very well.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.329, 0.750 — Jose Iglesias batting against Cristopher Sanchez.
- 0.293, 0.743 — Luis Arraez batting against Garrett Crochet.
- 0.321, 0.731 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Mason Black.
- 0.308, 0.711 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Tyler Alexander.
- 0.303, 0.704 — Freddie Freeman batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.307, 0.702 — Mookie Betts batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.306, 0.699 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.309, 0.695 — Miguel Rojas batting against Kyle Freeland.
- 0.262, 0.694 — Yainer Diaz batting against Tyler Anderson.
- 0.275, 0.693 — Trea Turner batting against David Peterson.
- 0.291, 0.693 — Freddy Fermin batting against Mason Black.
Iglesias owns a thirteen game hit streak, the longest in the majors at the moment. Witt is the consensus double down pick. Note that the top three on this list are all on teams pushing for a playoff spot, so they are likely to still be bearing down to win.
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!