so someone told me of this free baseball lottery where you had to pick 50 consecutive batters who will get at least 1 base hit during the game and you win some $million+ prize.

To figure out the odds of winning this I assume that you are going to pick players who are as good as Manny Ramirez and all on bases are a result of a hit then your odds for a single game are roughly 41%. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hitting/hiobp1.shtml
So your odds of being right 50 times in a row is 1/(0.41)^50 =
1 in 20,319,307,662,496,700,000. You have a better chance getting 4 straight royal flushes in poker than winning this lottery.
For fun, lets assume that you could pick batters who were as good as Babe Ruth. Your odds are (1/(0.477))^50 =
1 in 11,859,900,568,661,800. Which is much better odds but you are more like to win consecutive rounds of powerball..
To put this into perspective: if every man/woman/child played this lottery the odds that there would be a winner are still astronomically small.

Even using your link wouldn't work since on base percentage is not the same as getting a hit every time.

they just won't give the price. lol.

@trumper I know that it's not the same as a base hit. I checked with the person who told me about it and apparently it is just on base and not base hit..

Your odds are wrong because a player will bat 4 or 5 times in a game

rules say hits, not on base. it's also $5.6m

"The object of MLB.com Beat the Streak (the "Contest") is to establish a virtual "hitting streak" and keep it going for as long as possible. You'll do this by selecting one (1) or two (2) Major League Baseball ("MLB") player(s) each game day, from a list displayed by MLB.com of MLB players who are on a MLB Club's active roster on that game day. If the player you select gets at least one hit in the game for which you selected him, your streak continues. If the player you select does not get a hit, you can still participate, but your streak automatically ends and will be set to zero. You must select a player each MLB game day; however, you can make your daily player selections for up to ten (10) calendar days in the future. You can select any player as many times as you want over the course of the Contest Period (as defined below)."

klown: its really 3-5 plate appearances per game for the most part

If you're going to include 3 PAs you might as well include 6 :P they are both about equally common.

ok.. my friend doesn't know what he is talking about.
If we are talking hits, then the best batters in the MLB are around the 0.300 mark. Assuming an 4 at bats, your odds of them getting at least one hit are roughly 1-(1-0.3)^4 = 76% although truthfully the independence assumption doesn't hold here..
So to get to a streak of 50 your odds are:
1 in 916,596
:P

Those odds seem too good for a 5.6 million dollar prize

right, but the issue is that you can't predict which player is going to be 0.3 or higher for the season very easily.. we are talking hall of famers here..
also there's the fact that people have different % vs left/right handed pitchers as well as against different pitcher in general.
realistically the real probability is probably closer to the 0.200 range. (60% of the time you'll get at least one hit in a game).
which places your odds at 1 in 277,129,373,042 which makes a lot more sense for a lottery like this.

Actually, the batting average is for each AB.

most players gets 4~5 ABs a game.

@forgotten right. So assuming that for each at bat you have a 20% chance of getting a hit

for 4 at bats your odds of getting at least one hit is 1-(1-0.2)^4
which is about 60% of getting at least one hit .
assuming that you are also consistent against all pictchers across the next 50 games your odds of getting at least one hit in 50 games in a row is 0.6^50
1/0.6^50 is 277.....
:P

I honestly don't think it'll be that hard.

I just don't have the time to research statistics

There are batters vs projected starters on that day, right handed vs left handed, then career % vs that pitcher.

I'm sure there are at least a few 'sweet' spots every day where it's a good bet that a batter will get a hit.

Those guys that play Out Of The Park baseball franchise will probably make a good run at the prize imo

.300 batting average means they get a hit 30% of the time..

Forgotten I never think it sounds that hard either, but apparently no one has ever won

It would be incredibly hard, but not as hard as martian makes it out to be. As others have pointed out, first off, the average starter has probably between 4 and 5 plate appearances a game, so as pointed out, even if you could pick all .300 hitters, the chance they'd get 1 hit in the game is far greater than 30%.

Furthermore, there is an INCREDIBLE amount of statistical data that people have at their disposal if you can see who the starting pitchers are, the parks they're playing in, not to mention knowing whether a player is on a hot streak or not.

For instance, looking at Albert Pujols stats for 2009-2011, he had 105 at bats at PNC Park where he batted .352. If he were playing in Pittsburgh (clearly not likely since he's now in the AL), I've just upped my chances significantly just by knowing he's got a 35% chance per at bat to get a hit as opposed to 32% as you'd say he has for his career batting average.

Or if he were playing the Cubs, against Jeff Samardzija, he's 5/12, which is admittedly a small sample size, but if he's seen the ball out of the guy's hand well enough to do that so far, I'm pretty willing to take him there too, but if Randy Wells is on the mound, where Pujols is 3/17, I back him off and find someone else.

I'm not saying this makes picking this easy. Clearly it's not--otherwise at least someone would have done it by now. But baseball is the sport where stats are kept and made public about virtually everything, and clearly even a 3-5% increase each day based on researching your picks and who they're playing against increases your odds a heck of a lot over the course of 50 games.

well I'm just assuming blind guessing and I provided the calcs.
If the chaces/at bat really were 30-35% each time then someone would have won a long time as that would imply that a player gets a hit 3 games out of 4.

The thing is that you have to be right 50 times in a row and the odds get exponentially worse the longer the streak you need.

The problem with these type of picks is that some guy will, and i'm sure of this, pick his favorite players over a logical choice by math.

If an impartial group did study the stats and pool'ed results, i think it would increase the chances than, say an avid baseball fan.

Yes, most people will not use statistical data. The amount of time to do this would be insane unless someone writes a program to do this. But can you download the whole stats database somewhere?

The problem with using logical choice through mathematical probability is that everyone will end up with the same logical choice and lack variations. The only time there will be variations would be if the data changes. The data will change every time it is updated but it is unlikely to make enough impact on overall data to change final outcome.

It's not 50, it's 57 games. The objective of that game is to beat Joe DiMaggio's 56 hit streak record. That's where the number comes from. And while your calcs are correct, your blind guessing is totally off target. The average BA in the majors in 2011 was .255. That's quite a bit higher than .200. And as Forgotten alluded you can just pick favourable matchups every day to increase those odds dramatically. Winning that thing is much easier than you make it out to be (yet still incredibly hard, just not nearly as much).

@tduong: actually baseball stats are used in my field (and others) as sources of data to show a variety of forecasting techniques and game theory. Because of the huge amount of information kept and the large number of games played in a season (compared to other sports) it makes an excellent example of a repeated game outside of a financial context where there is ample free data. It wouldn't surprise me if people out there have built models to some extent.
You have to understand that even with these models there is judgment involved and there isn't a single "right" answer. Probability is subjective. Ultimately the model points you in a direction and is one additional tool used to make a decision.. but not the only thing.


There is actually a paper on one of my exams that uses actual baseball stats to illustrate a model.

And note that I do this kind of thing for a living (not with baseball, with insurance data).

@Altafini: that's true. Although people always overestimate their abilities in this respect. It's hard to know for this how much you can improve your odds over simply picking batters with high averages at random.
It probably isn't a huge amount or someone would have won by now..

You need a group to put together an effort.

At least 30 fans that religiously follow their own team, a stats guy that can actually run and parse data, add in a few more subjective stats guy,

and then you add in all the 'rumours' that only passionate fans knows, like this player always sucks in afternoon games (which actually might be tracked also), or 'i saw the player sporting ice on his shoulder'

that sort of thing.

and then winning it is still a 50/50 thing imo