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Hitting Streak Chances: Does the Date Matter?

In the November 2008 issue of By the Numbers, Jim Albert looks at hitting streaks and provides results that streaks happen more regularly than they should. The research was solid, except where he assumes the ability to get a hit is equal across a season. The ability to get a hit though is not constant across a season. This difference can be seen in the article, Changes in League Averages Over the Course of the Season by Brian Morrow, which was also published in By the Numbers. Brian shows that there is a 3% change in the number of hits per PA across the season, with the peak in the middle of the season and low points at the beginning and end of the season. This change is probably do to the increase in hits do to the extra distance a ball travels as the temperature increases. Balls hit when it is hotter face less air resistance therefore act like they were hit harder than they actually were and will travel further.

I decided to look to see when hitting streaks occur and if the time of the season is important. I took the 100 top hitting streaks from the past 10 years (20 game streak is the minimum) and marked how many of these streaks where happening each day. If a streak went from one season to the next, both ends of the streak were included. I also included the average temperature of the all the games for the last 10 years. Here is the results:

Tempvsstreak_medium

Star-divide

Though the number of streaks doesn't perfectly increase with temperature, there is a definite summer increase where twice as many streaks happened as compared to the spring and fall.  A streak can't be 100% attributed to the weather, but it can't be dismissed that streaks happen more often in the warm summer months.

Jim's article is not the only case where a writer assumed that stats are put up evenly across a season, which they are not. Many people assume that pitching dominates the post season, but when you are playing when it's 40 degrees F out side, the ball will not travel as far as when it is 100 degrees F (~42 feet less on a 400ft HR).

When you start hearing that a hitter is heating up and on a streak, it may not be all him, mother nature may also be playing a role.

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Love that graph.

I’d like to hear people’s ideas as to why hitting streaks seem to happen more earlier in the year than later in the year when the weather’s the warmest.

Another reason you’ll see more hitting streaks than expected by random chance is that there are “streaks” of home games and bad pitchers. When those things (which both help hitters) are pushed together, you’ll see more streaks. (Just like when hitters face streaks of road games and good pitchers, you’ll probably find that there are fewer good hitting streaks than chance would imply.)

by Sky Kalkman on Jun 24, 2009 11:22 AM EDT reply actions  

Hold the phone,

I thought all this stuff was random?

If you were thinking, you wouldn't have thought that.

by Warden11 on Jun 24, 2009 12:50 PM EDT reply actions  

Shh...

It’s only random till someone finds a connection.

OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.

by bdalebs on Jun 24, 2009 6:02 PM EDT up reply actions  

I'm not sure how to prove this

But it would make sense that hitters are at their best in the middle of year independently from the weather. They have played long enough into the season to get a “feel” for how they are playing, and they haven’t felt the strain of a full season yet.

St. Louis relievers... defying win expectancy since 2008
http://www.drivelinemechanics.com/

by vivaelpujols on Jun 25, 2009 1:37 AM EDT reply actions  

Easy one there, just set bins for temps and see if there is more hits depending on temperature

Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.

by Jeff Zimmerman on Jun 25, 2009 11:18 AM EDT reply actions  

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