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 versus starting pitchers:
- 0.303 — Jose Iglesias batting against Frankie Montas.
- 0.302 — Tyler Fitzgerald batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.292 — Heliot Ramos batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.289 — Luis Arraez batting against Merrill Kelly.
- 0.286 — Randal Grichuk batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.286 — Lourdes Gurriel batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.283 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Adam Oller.
- 0.283 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Brady Singer.
- 0.283 — Kevin Newman batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.280 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Cal Quantrill.
MLB lists Yu Darvish as the starter for the Padres, but everywhere else it’s Perez. Keep an eye on that if you decide to select a Diamondbacks hitter.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of collecting a hit:
- 0.303, 0.742 — Jose Iglesias batting against Frankie Montas.
- 0.289, 0.738 — Luis Arraez batting against Merrill Kelly.
- 0.276, 0.708 — Bobby Witt Jr. batting against Max Fried.
- 0.271, 0.704 — Yainer Diaz batting against Joey Cantillo.
- 0.283, 0.703 — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting against Adam Oller.
- 0.272, 0.699 — Trea Turner batting against Trevor Williams.
- 0.280, 0.693 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Cal Quantrill.
- 0.283, 0.692 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Brady Singer.
- 0.302, 0.692 — Tyler Fitzgerald batting against Miles Mikolas.
- 0.279, 0.691 — Amed Rosario batting against Jameson Taillon.
- 0.276, 0.691 — Michael Harris II batting against Brady Singer.
It’s a Jose Iglesias day, with Arraez the 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!