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:

0.281 — Christian Yelich batting against Adam Wainwright.
0.278 — Nick Markakis batting against Tanner Roark.
0.278 — Avisail Garcia batting against Jakob Junis.
0.277 — Freddie Freeman batting against Tanner Roark.
0.276 — J.T. Realmuto batting against Jason Vargas.
0.275 — Freddy Galvis batting against Drew Pomeranz.
0.275 — David Peralta batting against Jordan Lyles.
0.271 — Trey Mancini batting against Ervin Santana.
0.271 — Thomas Pham batting against Jakob Junis.
0.271 — Jeff McNeil batting against Vincent Velasquez.

Yelich is the best hitter in the game right now, and destroyed the Cardinals up until the last two games. This is not the usual group of suspects, however, which makes me suspect there are some good pitchers starting today.

Here are the neural network picks:

• 0.275, 0.705 — David Peralta batting against Jordan Lyles.
• 0.281, 0.703 — Christian Yelich batting against Adam Wainwright.
• 0.264, 0.701 — J.D. Martinez batting against Tyson Ross.
• 0.263, 0.698 — Jose Altuve batting against Kohl Stewart.
• 0.262, 0.697 — Anthony Rendon batting against German Marquez.
• 0.258, 0.696 — Jose Martinez batting against Jhoulys Chacin.
• 0.271, 0.694 — Jeff McNeil batting against Vincent Velasquez.
• 0.277, 0.693 — Freddie Freeman batting against Tanner Roark.
• 0.261, 0.690 — Michael Brantley batting against Kohl Stewart.
• 0.263, 0.690 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Anibal Sanchez.

This is a somewhat different list, as the two systems are not in much agreement. Yelich is the consensus first pick, with David Peralta the consensus second choice. Peralta is finding the gaps this year with eleven doubles in 101 at bats. He hit 25 doubles in a full season in 2018.

Games start at 1 PM EDT today, so pick early!

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/2UYaLsd