Were there other streaks less likely than Joe’s.
Yes, but only one.
If all players had equal ability, then Joe DiMaggio’s hit streak would be the least likely by far, simply because it was the longest by far. Think of it this way: no other player in history ever had a 46 game hit streak, but DiMaggio had 11 of them! (Games 1-46 of his famous streak, all the way to games 11-56). He’s light years beyond anyone else.
But here’s the thing: all players do not have equal ability. The odds against my hitting in two consecutive games would be greater than the odds of DiMaggio hitting in 56. I won’t be getting a chance, but unequal ability also affects the odds in the real world.
Hit streaks are a factor of two things:
(1) How likely was a player to hit in each game?
(2) How many games did he play?
In turn, factor one has two components
(1a) How many times did he get to the plate?
(1b) How likely was he to get a hit each time?
Joe DiMaggio was almost uniquely positioned among modern players to succeed in factor one.
(1a) He played for a great offensive team, and batted near the top of the line-up, so he batted frequently. His likelihood would have been even higher if he had batted lead-off, because he would have come to the plate an additional .33 times per game. That doesn’t sound like much, but it would have made his streak four times more likely!
(1b) He was a great hitter who didn’t walk much, so he had a high likelihood of getting a hit in each at bat. He was far more likely to get a hit in any given appearance than, for example, Ted Williams, because Williams walked a lot, and walks don’t count toward a hit streak.
On the other hand, DiMaggio didn’t rank very high on factor two in 1941.
(2) He played in only 139 games, meaning that he only had 84 opportunities for a 56 game single-season streak. Any streak begun in game 85 or later would have to end before it could reach 56.
The great achievement of DiMaggio’s streak rests on the value of an exponent. Sure, he had an 80% likelihood to get a hit in any given game, but any likelihood taken to the 56th power becomes a very small decimal. Even with Joe D’s great ability, the odds against that hit streak were about 8000-to-1.
And yet, there was another hit streak of only 33 games that was not only less likely than Joe’s 56, but far less likely.
DiMMaggio’s streak was highly unlikely, even with DiMaggio’s hot hitting that year. If you were to replay DiMaggio’s season again and again on an infinite loop with a perfect statistical model of his 1941 performance, you would only duplicate the streak every 7,797 seasons. It was a statistical anomaly, even with expectations raised in deference to the talent of the great DiMag.
But Uggla’s streak was beyond anomalous and into the territory of miraculous. Dan Uggla was less likely to hit in 33 consecutive games than DiMaggio was to hit in 56. Far less likely. 15 times less likely. Somehow, Dan Uggla hit in 33 consecutive games in a season in which he didn’t bat very often per game, lost opportunities with a low batting average, and lost more opportunities by walking quite a bit. How did it happen? Uggla, a mediocre hitter went on one of the all-time hot streaks. In those 33 games, he batted .377 with 15 homers. He was basically hitting like Barry Bonds in his best years. During the rest of the year, Uggla batted .194. That 183-point difference is uncanny.
DiMaggio also was hot, of course. He batted .408 in the streak and .320 the rest of the year, but it’s not odd for a guy of DiMaggio’s caliber to have a long streak when he bats around .400. In 1939, DiMaggio was batting .443 for the whole season as late as July 13th. The explanation for 1941 is not that Joe D had so few hitless games. He had many of them, 25 to be exact. The magic of 1941 is how those 25 hitless games were distributed. They managed to stay out of the streak.
Apart from that unusual distribution, DiMaggio was just being DiMaggio. That’s not unusual, but it is unusual so see a .194 hitter being DiMaggio, and Uggla was just that. DiMaggio’s OPS was 1.181 during his streak. Uggla’s was 1.200 in his. Nobody can explain it. It just is.
Were there streaks that were predictable.
Yes. There was never a streak of 30 or more that was an even money bet, but there were a few that came pretty close,
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If you could recreate Ed Delahanty’s season with perfect statistical fidelity on that infinite loop I mentioned, Big Ed would post a 30-game streak every five years. If DiMaggio was performing at the top of his game, and Uggla seemed to have a short-term pact with Satan, Delahanty was simply conducting business as usual. Yes, he batted .422 during the streak, but he also topped .400 in his other games (.406). That mere 16-point difference compares to 88 for DiMaggio and 183 for Uggla.
Were there individual seasons that were even more streak-friendly, but didn’t produce one?
Yes, there is one that really stands out, and a few honorable mentions, but there is nothing in the past hundred years.
Hugh Duffy had the most likely season to produce a 30-game streak. No other season came close. He accumulated nearly five plate appearances per game and got a hit in more than 38% of his plate appearances, Both factors are close to all-time records at the modern pitching distance. He was so efficient in 1894 that he was about an even bet to pull off a 30-game streak, but he did not. He did reach 26.
Of the eight seasons most likely to produce a 30-game hit streak, only three actually did.
Note that George Sisler has two seasons on the list. His 1920 season did not produce a 30-game streak streak, but his 1922 season more than made up for it with a 41-game streak, which remained the 20th century record for 56 years until Pete Rose had his famous hot streak.
