Beat the Streak Picks

For the past two 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. If you find this useful, please support Baseball Musings with a donation.

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.

For 2019, I am just going to publish the Log5 hit averages and the NN probabilities with parks factored in. I am keeping track of the results here. I added a graph that gives a visual representation of the probability and success each day.

First, the Log5 Method picks:

• 0.315 — David Peralta batting against Kyle Hendricks.
• 0.296 — Adam Jones batting against Kyle Hendricks.
• 0.291 — Tim Anderson batting against Jordan Zimmermann.
• 0.290 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Jason Vargas.
• 0.290 — Jose Martinez batting against Jason Vargas.
• 0.289 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Jakob Junis.
• 0.287 — Paul DeJong batting against Jason Vargas.
• 0.282 — Jorge Polanco batting against Alex Cobb.
• 0.278 — Jeff McNeil batting against Adam Wainwright.
• 0.274 — Clint Frazier batting against Jakob Junis.
• 0.274 — Jose Altuve batting against Drew Smyly.

Hendricks allowed a .393 BA so far this season, which is way out of line with his career numbers. With one five walks allowed having faced 67 batters, his hit average against is also very high, even regressed to the league average on the basis of 200 batters faced (BF). Peralta is 3 for 11 against Hendricks in his career, and puts the ball in play.

Vargas’s career indicates he’s much more likely to give up a hit.

Here are the neural network picks:

• 0.315, 0.725 — David Peralta batting against Kyle Hendricks.
• 0.274, 0.707 — Jose Altuve batting against Drew Smyly.
• 0.278, 0.706 — Jeff McNeil batting against Adam Wainwright.
• 0.290, 0.705 — Jose Martinez batting against Jason Vargas.
• 0.296, 0.704 — Adam Jones batting against Kyle Hendricks.
• 0.291, 0.700 — Tim Anderson batting against Jordan Zimmermann.
• 0.290, 0.700 — Marcell Ozuna batting against Jason Vargas.
• 0.282, 0.700 — Jorge Polanco batting against Alex Cobb.
• 0.268, 0.698 — Christian Yelich batting against Ross Stripling.
• 0.289, 0.697 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Jakob Junis.

The two systems do agree on Peralta as the best pick of the day, and Adam Jones is the consensus second choice.

I do not guarantee results. Your best pick is going to have about a 25% chance of not getting a hit. Good luck!

from baseballmusings.com http://bit.ly/2Pif5MK