Chasing Joe

I was debating whether to write this now, or whether to wait until after Chase Utley's hit streak ended, but, as the Rays lost again I thought I'd go with it, and send my profuse apologies if Utley doesn't get a hit tonight.

I am, like most baseball fans (I imagine), enthralled with hit streaks.  Its a simple little thing, generally meaningless in the overall picture of baseball.  By that I mean that a player could have a 100-game hit streak without ever contributing anything useful to his team.  But its something that we love never-the-less.  And I think I know the reason why.  Its because all baseball fans (well most) are statisticians at heart.

Of course it does help that the record is held by Joe DiMaggio.  Obviously I never saw him play, but he's one of those players that everyone loves.  The fact that he had two of the best nicknames in baseball just confirms his position among the games greats.

But the real reason is that a long hit streak is so simple, yet so unattainable.  Take a batter with a .333 average.  On the current year, there are five players at or above that mark.  They are averaging one hit every 3 at-bats.  And in most games they will get at least 4 at bats, often more.  So getting one hit every game, for 56 games should be easy, right?

I don't have many baseball books, but one that I treasure is a collection of writings by Stephen Jay Gould, 'Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville'.  Its a brilliant collection of articles and columns that Gould penned, and one of them stands out to me in particular.  Its titled 'The Streak of Streaks'.  In it he beautifully describes Joltin' Joe's streak in terms of probability.  To some people that may seem to reduce its value.  But to me it emphasises even more what a wonderful achievement it was.

It starts with a simple basketball comparison.  If a player has a one-in-two chance of making a basket, then a run of five straight baskets should be expected once in every 32 sequences of five attempts - 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/32 (this pattern is the odds of a coin toss).  Obviously better players have better odds of making any particular shot, and so they are more likely to make a run, whilst poorer players are less likely.

Gould then mentions Ed Purcell, a Nobel laureate in Physics, who studied baseball streak and slump records.  He states that Purcell's conclusions were that no streak in baseball has ever occured above and beyond the frequency predicted by the coin toss model.  He says that the record win/loss streaks are as long as they should be, and have happened at the right frequencies - citing the example of Baltimore's 0-21 start to the 1988 season as a statistical likelihood that was to be expected to happen in some point of baseball's history.

There is, however, one exception.

56.

Purcell's calculations determined that for it to have been a statistical likelihood for a 56-game hit streak to occur (probability of better than 0.5), then baseball would need (up to the point that the article was written, 1988) to have had either four .400 career hitters (there are none), or 52 hitters with a lifetime mark of .350.  In fact only three players have achieved that - Ty Cobb (.367), Rogers Hornsby (.358) and Shoeless Joe Jackson (.356).  Speaking from a mathematical standpoint, Joe's streak simply should not have happened.

So if it should not have happened, we can be sure that it will never happen again, right?  Probably.  But one of the joys of baseball is that you just never know.  If the Rays can be shutout on two hits one night, and then score the second most runs ever by a visiting team at Yankee Stadium the next night, then anything is possible.  Chase Utley has made it to 34.  He needs to hit safely in another 22 straight games to equal DiMaggio.  I don't know how many 20-game streaks there have been this year, but I would guess maybe 1 or 2.  And Utley still has that many more games to go.  Will he make it?  Probably not.  Could he do it?  Maybe.  Will we all be cheering him on?  Of course, and we'll keep on cheering for every player, on every hit streak, until someone, someday breaks Joe's record.

Then again, perhaps some things are meant to last forever.