  There have been more hitting streaks in Major League Baseball than we would
expect. All batting lines of MLB hitters from 1957-2006 were randomly permuted
10,000 times and the number of hitting streaks of each length from 2 to 100 was
measured. The average count of each length streak was then compared to the
corresponding total from real-life, when the games were in chronological order.
The number of streaks in real-life was significantly higher than over the
random permutations. Non-starts (such as pinch-hitting appearances) were
removed since these may be unduly reducing the number of streaks in the
permutations; the number of streaks in the permutations increased but was still
significantly lower than real-life totals. Possible explanations are given for
why more streaks have appeared in real-life than we would expect, including
possibly the hot hand idea. Contact at<EMAIL_ADDRESS>