Beat the Streak Report: Weekend, Aug. 28-30
Today’s Recommended Picks
- .533 AVG (8-for-15) lifetime vs. Giants starter Tim Lincecum
- .500 AVG (7-for-14) lifetime vs. Rays starter Matt Garza
- .471 AVG (8-for-17) since ’04 vs. White Sox starter Mark Buehrle
Saturday’s recommended picks
- .412 AVG (7-for-17) lifetime vs. Phillies starter Cliff Lee
- .643 AVG (9-for-14) lifetime vs. Royals starter Gil Meche
- .714 AVG (5-for-7) lifetime vs. Blue Jays starter Ricky Romero
Sunday’s recommended picks
- .571 AVG (8-for-14) lifetime vs. Reds starter Bronson Arroyo
- .467 AVG (7-for-15) lifetime vs. Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright
- .429 AVG (9-for-21) since ’04 vs. Rangers starter Kevin Millwood
BTS all-time leader: Michael Karatzia, 49
MLB all-time leader: Joe DiMaggio, 56
Yesterday’s results
Hanley Ramirez was the trendy pick among BTS titans Thursday. The dynamic shortstop’s 1-for-4 night helped sustain jagzrule77’s perch atop the leaderboard, as his streak reached 37 games.
Moving into a tie for second — also on the strength of Han-Ram — were cwahl and phadrus74, who pushed their runs of perfection to 35 in a row.
It wasn’t good news all around, though, as thatsawinner didn’t live up to his name for the first time in a long time, incorrectly selecting Albert Pujols to end a formidable 35-game streak.
Yesterday’s Top 5 most selected players
1. Ichiro Suzuki (SEA): 12.6%, 0-for-0
2. Hanley Ramirez (FLA): 10.8%, 1-for-4
3. Albert Pujols (STL): 8.1%, 0-for-2
4. Ryan Braun (MIL): 5.8%, 1-for-5
5. Prince Fielder (MIL): 5.4%, 1-for-3
Beat the Streak Report 
WEATHER REPORT……….
Huricane Danny looks to be moving north up the Atlantic Coast this weekend. Rains out? – Baltimore, NY, Boston
If you are still in the hunt for 57 and can’t afford a washout, stay away from these games.
dragbunt
Saturday Aug 29
There are some pitchers who give up many hits. I’m looking at:
Torii Hunter v. Mazzaro (A’s) – at Oakland, Hunter never faced Mazzaro but league is batting .319 against him.
His ERA in Aug is 5.68
Chase Utley v. Lowe(Braves) – Lowe struggling big time gives up alot of hits his Aug. ERA is 5.79 – At Philly
Utley is 7 – 20 v. Lowe
Michael Young v. Pavano (TWNS) – Pavano gives up alot of hits – Aug ERA 3.55- Young batting .337 in August. At Minn.
Young 3 – 5 v. Pavano
Guys – Who do you like?
I like Young vs Pavano. That’s who I’m going with tomorrow.
For Sunday as of now I’m going with Orlando Cabrera vs. Millwood.
I went with Scott Podsednik of the White Sox today.
Danny was never a hurricane and is no longer a tropical storm. Most of the heavy rains stayed offshore or on Long Island.
Also, most of the rain NYC expected to get, is supposed to end by noon, so if the field is too messed up to play on, the rainout should occur before picks lock and I can always go back and change it.
champion_88……….
Scott Podsednik of WSOX now plays part-time. Alex Rios is WSOX everyday CF. “Pods” could come off the bench and pinch hit. Watch the lineups before the game to see if he is in fact starting. He could be in the game as WSOX Carlos Quentin LF may not play in a day game following a night game(his bad foot).
I’m locked in on Michael Young of Twins.
Contreras of WSOX is hitable but his back is to the wall as this is his last start because Jake Peavy of WSOX should be ready to go soon. Contreras will be out to impress today.
dragbunt
It was my belief that Podsednik starts against righties and sits against lefties.
I had looked at Podsednik yesterday against Sabathia and saw “wow, I cannot pick him. Look at Sabathia’s BAA.”
Then, I noticed yesterday that Podsednik did not play yesterday, but had noticed that 9/10 games, he has gotten at least 4 AB.
I have noticed also that when Podsednik does not start, he also tends to not play.
I decided to go with Podsednik originally, because I had never seen Mitre throw a dominant outing, longer than like 5.2 IP, whereas Pavano has a few complete game shutouts this year.
But Michael Young would be my second pick.
How long is your streak up to now?
Additionally, I just checked his August stats.
This month, he has sat overall 4 days, but only had 1 day with just the 1 AB…all other days have been at least 3 AB…everything else but 1 has been at least 4 AB.
champion_88…………
My streak is at 6 now. Longest streak this year is 14.
I hope Podsednik opens the game with a typical “Pods” sharp line drive single to left! Mitre is very hittable. He has bounced around alot and spent some time with Cubs a few seasons ago. I’m really shocked that he is with NYY.
Tempting to take Hanley Ramirez v. lefty with SD but I’m going to stay with Michael Young.
This is the kind of info that we need to keep passing among ourselves on the blog. Extra info helps make better decisions. The posts like: Wow! Figgins just singled in the first and my streak is still alive are off target as they do not help us play smarter.
lcfrancisco and hammanm who do you like today?
dragbunt
Sunday 8/30…………..
Alex Rodriguez looks good v. Freddy Garcia WSOX. Garcia is just back from DL and pitched in his first game of the season a few days ago and did pretty well. Rodriguez is on a hot streak batting .423 and is 5 – 9 v. Garcia lifetime.
Any other ideas for Sunday would be appreciated.
FYI – Podsednik does not play v. righties and sit v. lefties.
He lost his starting job to Carlos Quentin who came off the DL. Quentin is now the regular LF. WSOX now have Alex Rios in CF and Pods, who was doing great, is the odd man out – He spells Quentin and Rios on their off days.
dragbunt
Picked Hanley Ramirez today, endimg my 21 game hitting streak.
Best of luck to anyone still alive, and see you all next year.
Well there went my last chance to best the leader for the season.
My streak was only at 5 games, but with 37 days left of the season, I had an extreme outside chance of tying the leader if I could have collected 3 extra days of games at the end of the season.
This fact could have been accomplished through a rainout game being played on the Monday, with the result of that game leading to a 3-way tie for one playoff spot, forcing 2 additional playoff games.
Then, I would have just needed to hope that my player in the last game had more hits than Tanner had on his last day.
Even so, for all who lost streaks today, all is not lost.
There is still enough time to pick up a $50 gift certificate (35-game hitting streak with 36 guaranteed days left in the regular season) or a free MLB.TV Postseason subscription (30-game hitting streak with 36 guaranteed days left in the regular season.)
Finally, ohwow, do you have an e-mail address we can contact you on, during the offseason?
36 days left of the season:
148 players still guaranteed with a chance to reach 57
28 additional players need 1 day of tiebreakers
32 additional players need 2 days of tiebreakers
41 additional players need 3 days of tiebreakers
1425 players still guaranteed with a chance to tie 45.
42 PAGES of players with an outside chance of reaching 45, with 1, 2, or 3 days of tiebreakers at the end of the season.
I have noticed that as soon as it was impossible to reach 57, the participation in the contest has declined significantly, since earlier on in the season, you needed around an 11-14 game streak just to get onto the active leaderboard, whereas now, a 9-game streak gets you halfway up.
The “King” needs to come up with better prizes for the guys who have had big seasons! The person who has the longest streak of the year should get $50,000 providing the streak was at least 40 games. No one has ever hit 50 games, the prize for that should be $100,000. Offering $100 gift certificates/MLB Subscriptions to guys who had 35 plus streaks is pretty weak. How many burgers is the King selling each day? He can afford it!
Monday looks tough – any thoughts – I’m looking at Michael Young.
Well I do not think the 30 or 35-game prizes can really go any higher.
I mean right now there are 22 people with streaks of 35 or higher with another 12 people right now at 30 or higher.
The current prize for 35 is $50, which currently costs MLB $1,100, with a potential for $1,700 if all the players at 30 or higher, make it to 35.
While that sounds like no cost for MLB, if the prize were $2,000, the current cost would be $44,000 for that category alone, with a possible cost of $68,000 or more.
There are 109 people with streaks of 30 or higher with another 74 people right now at 25 or higher.
The current prize for 30 is a $20 MLB.TV subscription, which currently costs MLB $2,180, with a potential for $3,660 if all the players at 25 or higher, make it to 30.
While that sounds like no cost for MLB, if the prize were $1,000, the current cost would be $109,000 alone, with a possible cost of $183,000 or more.
There are only 4 people with streaks of 40 or higher with another 4 people right now at 35 or higher.
The current prize right now for 40 is still only $50, which means MLB suffers no additional cost for these 4-8 players.
While that is no cost for MLB, if the prize were $50,000, the current cost would be $200,000 alone, with a possible cost of $400,000 or more.
No one has reached 50 games ever, but if that prize was $100,000, there would need to be another consolation prize level for the overall winner that would need to be higher than $100,000. Perhaps $250,000?
I assume the grand prize next year will be $2 million???, since that would be a natural extension upwards from the $1 million to $1.5 million jump this year.
If we add up the anticipated cost of this new pricing structure compared to the old pricing structure, you get the following:
35 (New): $44,000—–$68,000
35 (Old): $1,100—–$1,700
30 (New): $109,000—–$183,000
30 (Old): $2,180—–$3,660
40 (New): $200,000—–$400,000
40 (Old): None
50 (New): $50,000 (assuming 1 person reaches 50 next year)
50 (Old): $100
Consolation Prize (New): $250,000
Consolation Prize (Old): $10,000
Grand Prize (New): $2,000,000 (Projected)
Grand Prize (Old): $1,500,000
Total Prize Money (New): $2,653,000—–$2,884,700
Total Prize Money (Old): $1,513,380—–$1,515,460
Difference (New-Old): $1,139,620—–$1,369,240
Now, the money is a little overinflated, because I did not take into account such things as the fact that everyone who wins the 35-game prize does NOT also win the 30-game prize.
But I have already spent a lot of time on this post, so I will not go back to correct it here, especially since I am making this post on numbers that can change.
The big problem here is that you probably only add $500,000 of actual cash to the prize money, but your expenses go between ~$600,000-$900,000.
Where does that money come from, if MLB is not willing to pump in the extra cash?
There really are only 2 possibilities: either charge a fee for entering the contest or decrease the value of either the Grand Prize or the consolation prize.
I doubt MLB would charge a fee, just simply because that would eliminate a lot of casual players who probably help boost up advertisement deals.
I also doubt MLB would decrease the consolation prize because it is so low to begin with, it would not actually be able to cover the deficit.
But I also do not think MLB would decrease the Grand Prize, because that would lower it all the way down to $1.1-$1.4 million.
MLB’s marketing loves to brag about how the top prize increases each year as the “biggest fantasy sports prize in history,” so I doubt they would let that number drop. Casual players will not understand why the prize is dropping and might think the contest is about to enter its final year, which will decrease the advertisement deals and money supply for this contest even further.
However, even if MLB is not willing to expand its budget beyond the annual Grand Prize expansion, I still have an idea of how to add in all these decently substantial moderate-level prizes: Use the money you have been saving from the last few years when no one won the top prize before.
I believe the top prize has been $1 million in 2007 and 2008 and $1.5 million this year. Assuming no one wins this year, you have $3.5 million. Taking 2009 numbers, you would have spent about $15,000 on consolation prizes per year, which still leaves you with $3.45 million of surplus money.
That would be enough money to pay for the next 3 years worth of prize increases and you would be picking up an extra $1.1 million – $1.4 million per year if no one continues to win the Grand Prize.
So you would at least have enough money to finance a fourth year with the new prize amounts. And by that point, the economy should have trended back to an upswing, in which case MLB should be turning enough of a profit, to be able to expand the Beat the Streak budget to cover these new prize levels.
What does everyone think of this logic???
Your logic is sound on the $. Giving multiple big prizes for long game streaks would be cost prohibitive.
Questions:
Does Burger King pay a sponorship fee to MLB and take responsibility for the $1.5M prize?
If they do, I’m guessing that they pay an insurance premium with a big company (Lloyds of London?) to insure the $1.5M prize if anyone hits it.
Burger King is getting mega advertising hits on this game.
The other prizes are small and should not be a problem to absorb for MLB/Burger King.
There really has not been a big hit on this game so prizes have been manageable.
How about prizes for the top 3 streaks of the year?
1st prize – $10,000
2nd prize – $5,000
3rd prize – $1,000
Consolation prizes of $100 MLB gift cards for all those with streaks of 35+
Hopefully the powers to be (MLB and Burger King) are reading this and will act to appropriatley reward top players.
dragbunt
Rosters expand Tues. 9/1 and there will be rookie pitchers to add to the mix.
Monday 8/31……….
I’m going with Michael Young TX v. Brett Cecil of TOR. Cecil a lefty has ERA 7.11 in Aug and gives up a lot of hits with league hitting .300 against him. Young a righty should get a hit v. Cecil. Game is at TX.
Good luck to all!
dragbunt
Well actually I thought multiple big prizes would not work in the beginning of my post, but as I worked through the numbers, it seemed logical that MLB could use the extra money it had been saving by not giving out a grand prize yet, to spend on some pretty decent mid-level prizes:
30-game hit streaks: $1,000 (Assume 200; only 109 winners this year, but you need to round up, in case it is an above-normal year; 200 * $1,000 = $200,000)
35-game hit streaks: $2,500 (Assume 50 = $125,000)
40-game hit streaks: $5,000 (Assume 10 = $50,000)
45-game hit streaks: $10,000 (Assume 5 = $50,000)
50-game hit streaks: $25,000 (Assume 2 = $50,000)
Consolation Prize: Whichever prize level is highest that you reach
Grand Prize: $2,000,000
Or if you just want a slightly expanded mid-level pricing structure:
40-game hit streaks: $25,000 (Assume 10 = $250,000)
45-game hit streaks: $50,000 (Assume 5 = $250,000)
50-game hit streaks: $125,000 (Assume 2 = $250,000)
Even though that goes over my $500,000 cap, it is VERY generous to expect 17 streaks over 40 games, 5 over 45, and 2 over 50 games. It can be expected that one or more of those quotas will not be reached.
I think those 2 systems best add prize value in the mid-level structure, while still retaining the top prize, while only adding a relatively small amount of investment that can be syphoned off from the surplus built up from previous years.
If you want to make the mid-level targets more bullish or expand even further down to the 25-game level, you would need either more resources from MLB and/or the grand prize getting reduced.
And neither of those 2 things are that likely to happen.
Which of those 2 pricing scales would people prefer seeing implemented?
A few more things to add about the plans:
1) MLB could use a soft cap on the amount of prizes awarded per category at the beginning of the year; maybe use the numbers I gave in the assumption category.
That way if 200 people have 30-game hit streaks by mid-June, MLB is not stuck doling out 500 30-game hit streak prizes, but if the final count is 202 at the end of the year, MLB will award all of those who were successful.
If it does get abnormally high, MLB can just give awards to the first 200 players to accomplish the feat.
2) I do not have detailed yearly breakdowns for each category, but I do think the contest has gone on long enough that we have enough data to conclude that those caps are reliable enough to use.
For example, every year there has been no more than 5 or 6 40-game hit streaks and in the first year, no one hit 40.
It is extremely unlikely that there will randomly be 100 40-game hit streaks next year, unless Ichiro goes and breaks the record himself. So MLB should not be afraid to go out and offer $25,000 for something that is nearly 1/3 of the way back from the record.
Today I am going with Manny Ramirez at home vs. Doug Davis. Manny is hitting .600 against Davis since ’04 and went 3 for 4 against him in Arizona a couple of weeks ago.
Tuesday 9/1…………….
No Monday update from the web guy?
Looking at:
Todd Helton 4 – 5 v. Pelfrey(R) NYM
Troy Tulowitziki
Pablo Sandoval
Any suggestions………?
dragbunt
I’m going with Jason Bartlett vs. John Lester. Also like Hanley Ramirez vs. Tim Hudson. Hudson is making his first start of the year and Ramirez is hitting over .300 against him in the last 5 years. Ramirez is also coming off 3 straight ofer games. He’s due for a hit.
Bye Bye, jagzrule77 @41 & greeksmoke @ 37! Seriously, what were they thinking? Do people lose it when they get they high up? Sanchez is a tough pitcher to get a hit off. You have much better luck getting a walk off him though. I guess the curtain is falling down. Almost over!
Wednesday looks tough!
I’m looking at Troy Tulowiczki v. Redding NYY(R)
Helton just singled and my streak is now at 10 games. I’d like to beat my longest streak of the year of 14 games.
Hammanm and bts player who do you like for Wed?
Jeter v. Berken BALT(R) also looks good to me.
dragbunt
I’m going with Cano vs. Berken.
hammanm——You are the man!
Cano v. Berken looks solid.
Lefty v. Righty pitcher who has a big ERA and gives up a lot of hits.
Cano batting .370 over the past month
Cano had 3 hits at Balt on Tuesday.
A big tip of my Cub hat to you for this advice.
I’m locked in on Robinson Cano.
Good luck to all on Wed.
dragbunt
BEWARE………………
I know someone out there keeps tabs on Ichirio big time.
In the games that he has not gotten a hit, how many of these games have been against a lefty pitcher? He faces Scott Kazmir tomorrow. I hate lefty – lefty matchups – even though “The Little Magician” has a higher batting average v. lefties than righties. Kazmir could be energized now that he is with LAA. Did the LAA scouts see a mechanical flaw that they corrected in his delivery? I stay away from games that he pitches because I never know who is on the monund when he pitches – the good SK or the bad SK.
dragbunt