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 picks:
- 0.334 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.325 — William Contreras batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.323 — Mookie Betts batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.322 — Luis Arraez batting against Austin Gomber.
- 0.317 — Thomas Pham batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.313 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Trevor Rogers.
- 0.306 — Eloy Jimenez batting against Patrick Corbin.
- 0.304 — Andy Ibanez batting against Trevor Rogers.
- 0.304 — Kerry Carpenter batting against Trevor Rogers.
- 0.303 — Korey Lee batting against Patrick Corbin.
The top three on this list are also the top three in the NL batting race. Opponents own a .347 BABIP against Webb this season.
Gio Urshela came off the illjured list on Tuesday and returns to the top ten in the Log5 Method as well.
The NN produces this list of batters with a high probability of getting a hit:
- 0.322, 0.753 — Luis Arraez batting against Austin Gomber.
- 0.334, 0.729 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.325, 0.725 — William Contreras batting against Martin Perez.
- 0.323, 0.718 — Mookie Betts batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.313, 0.709 — Giovanny Urshela batting against Trevor Rogers.
- 0.300, 0.706 — Freddie Freeman batting against Logan Webb.
- 0.278, 0.700 — Jose Altuve batting against Aaron Brooks.
- 0.277, 0.693 — Alec Bohm batting against Joey Lucchesi.
- 0.304, 0.689 — Kerry Carpenter batting against Trevor Rogers.
- 0.259, 0.688 — Harold Ramirez batting against Tanner Houck.
- 0.304, 0.688 — Andy Ibanez batting against Trevor Rogers.
The same top four in a different order. Both Ohtani and Betts hit Webb well, but Betts is based on a much bigger sample. Betts versus Webb is also a nice example of the Log5 Method working, as the actual hit average of the pair is .333 (9/27). Betts walked once against Webb and struck out twice, so the ball gets put in play.
Ohtani is the consensus top pick with Arraez and Contreras tied for 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!