Research published in March by the Stanford Graduate School of Business determined that hot streaks in sports are real.
The study was conducted by Stanford's Jeffrey Zwiebel and Brett Green of the University of California at Berkeley. "Contradicting academic studies dating back 30 years, researchers are now finding that a 'hot hand' in basketball or baseball is not a statistical illusion. In fact, hot streaks can help predict a player's likelihood of getting another hit or sinking another basket."
For years, we've been told that hot streaks were just statistical noise, "random fluctuations without predictive value." The study argued that, while hot players attract more attention by the opposition, thereby diffusing the streak, the streak itself is real.
"A player's most recent 25 times at bat was a significant predictor of how that player would do at his next time up," the study stated. "When a player is hot, his expected on-base percentage will be 25-to-30 points higher and he is 30 percent more likely to hit a home run than if he had been on a cold streak."
So basically, one week's worth of performance is enough to determine whether a hitter has elevated odds of continuing to perform well.
Several years ago, I had done some research at BaseballHQ.com that looked at the ability of starting pitchers to sustain dominant performances. There, too, was a strong indication that pitching streaks were real.
I found that "the further that a pitcher is into a streak of dominating starts, the higher the likelihood that the subsequent performance will be high quality. In fact, once a pitcher has posted six dominating starts in a row, there is greater than a 70 percent probability that the streak will continue. When it does end, there is less than a 10 percent probability that the streak-breaking performance is going to be a disaster. "
I decided to put all this newfound knowledge into practice this Friday while playing the Tout Wars daily game.