{"id":439,"date":"2008-05-30T01:05:40","date_gmt":"2008-05-30T00:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=439"},"modified":"2009-10-18T16:03:54","modified_gmt":"2009-10-18T15:03:54","slug":"hitting-streaks-in-7-inning-and-9-inning-baseball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=439","title":{"rendered":"Hitting streaks in 7-inning and 9-inning baseball"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt’s latest book review<\/a> got me thinking about hitting streaks, and -\u00c2\u00a0being a fan of the sport in Britain – my thoughts naturally turned to the subject of our domestic game.<\/p>\n

The National League South schedule consists purely of 7-inning double-headers, and it seems fair enough to state that maintaining a hitting streak across such games would be harder than doing so with the full-length variety. (As a counterpoint, innings do tend to be a little longer in the British game, but this is probably more than cancelled out by the existence of the slaughter rule, which can see games terminated after as few as 4-and-a-half frames.)<\/p>\n

As a way of addressing the question of how much harder it might be, I will firstly put together a very crude simulation of Joe DiMaggio’s career.\u00c2\u00a0Over 1736 games he amassed\u00c2\u00a02214 hits\u00c2\u00a0in 6821 at-bats. That’s a career batting average of .325, with\u00c2\u00a03.93 at-bats per game (we’ll call it 4 to keep things simple). Assuming that every game that DiMaggio plays in a fictitious 1736-game career he has\u00c2\u00a04 at-bats\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0a 32.5% chance of getting a hit\u00c2\u00a0each time\u00c2\u00a0(this is what I mean by crude), then the probability of him getting at least one hit in a game is a fraction under 80%. Using this, and\u00c2\u00a0with a bit of code in Excel, I can simulate his career as many times as I want. Even if this doesn’t sound like fun, you might\u00c2\u00a0still be interested in the results.<\/p>\n

This is the longest hitting streak in each of 50 simulated DiMaggio careers, ranked from shortest to lengthiest: 20 games, 20, 21, 21, 21, 22, 22, 22, 23, 23, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 26, 26, 26, 26, 27, 27, 27, 28, 28, 28, 29, 29, 29, 29, 29, 29, 30, 30,\u00c2\u00a031, 31, 32, 32,\u00c2\u00a032, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 48.<\/p>\n

It is interesting to note that Joe manages at least a 20-game streak in each career, and, of course, the 48-game run stands out. The\u00c2\u00a0number I will take from the list is 27, however, which is the 25th and 26th value and therefore\u00c2\u00a0right in the middle of the list (i.e. it is the median).<\/p>\n

Now let’s -\u00c2\u00a0crudely once more -\u00c2\u00a0make Joe play out his career in a 7-inning environment (to model\u00c2\u00a0this we’ll use 3 at-bats per game). I won’t repeat the list, but over 50 careers, the minimum longest streak is 11 (not even worthy of a postcard to mum), the maximum is 36, and the median is 17. This is a full 10 games less than our value from above, so the shorter games do clearly have a big impact.<\/p>\n

One of the major limitations of the simulation is that it does not throw in the odd game with just a couple of at-bats (which might easily happen, particularly if teams are pitching around you if your bat is\u00c2\u00a0perceived to be “hot”; Joltin’ Joe’s streak\u00c2\u00a0survived two games\u00c2\u00a0in which he had\u00c2\u00a0only 2 at-bats, including one in which he faced Hall of Fame pitcher\u00c2\u00a0Bob Feller).\u00c2\u00a0This\u00c2\u00a0could plausibly\u00c2\u00a0lead to an\u00c2\u00a0over-estimation of\u00c2\u00a0maximum career hitting streaks, which would make DiMaggio’s 56-game run seem all the more impressive (trumping all 50 of the simulated career maximums).<\/p>\n

Partly to test the effect of this, and partly for fun, I’m going to plug in the number of career games and the career batting average\u00c2\u00a0for the nine other players at the top of the list of longest hitting streaks. I’ll assume 4 at-bats per game in each case. And for each player I’ll just run the simulation once. Here’s what I get:<\/p>\n