Beat the Streak Record Run Comes to An End

Toronto left fielder Ezequiel Carrera will go down in history. Not for something he did on Monday, May 15, 2017, but for something he did not do: get a hit. With no baseball for the KC Royals Monday night, the streak took center stage.

Robert Mosley, better known as kamea in MLB’s Beat the Streak game, lucked out Saturday with Bryce Harper’s walk-off home run. Until that point, Harper had come dangerously close to ending Mosley’s hit streak. Harper’s heroics pushed Mosley’s hit streak to 51 games – the longest in the game’s 17-year history.

The concept of Beat the Streak is simple: choose up to two Major League players daily. String together a 57-game hit streak to beat Joe DiMaggio’s record of 56 games and you win $5.6 million dollars. If either of your players goes hitless, you start all over.

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Mosley was facing some serious pressure after Saturday’s miracle. He took Sunday off, then chose Toronto’s Kevin Pillar and Ezequiel Carrera Monday night. Pillar delivered with a single in the fifth inning to keep Mosley’s dream alive. Carrera? He finished 0 for 4 with a strikeout and a walk.

Mosley’s run to history illuminates just how difficult the game is. There are more than 100 base hits on any given night in the big leagues, yet my best streak has barely stretched over 10 games. This season I’ve peaked at a measly seven games.

The KC Royals  Eric Hosmer has been one of the hottest players in baseball this month. That does not make him an automatic pick in BTS. Upon warming up, he had hit safely in 10 games before Cleveland decided to pitch around him on May 7. But not entirely. Hosmer officially went 0 for 1 on the day with three walks. Last Thursday in Tampa Bay, Hosmer was robbed of another hit and finished the night 0 for 4, surely causing heartbreak for another round of players.

Smart picks in the 2017 season might include offensive dynamo Washington, which leads MLB with 370 hits and 224 runs. Mosley picked Harper and Ryan Zimmerman in Saturday’s game. Even Monday, Mosley wisely picked the top-two hitters in a red-hot Toronto lineup. Even that is a risky proposition given any pitcher can be hot on any given night. Walks and pinch-hit situations are worst enemies of BTS players.

Play BTS on your home computer or  on your mobile device with the BTS app. The app includes several specialized options, including the ability to sort hot players, cold pitchers, players batting at home, or batters who are facing a pitcher who throws with the opposite hand.

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With Mosley falling back to 0 games, the new BTS leader is “joeysouza9” with a streak of 42. He did not have a selection for Monday night.