No, not that kind of streaking. But, now that I have your attention, here are the 2012 gold, silver and bronze medal awards for streaks for various batting categories.

For each category, I’ve indicated both the hottest and coldest streaks. I’ll leave it for you to decide whether these streaks indicate that a player is prone to streaky play, or is just consistently good … or bad.

Some preliminaries. First, pitchers are arbitrarily excluded from all streak queries. Second, for an apples-to-apples comparison, I am counting streaks only for games in which a player was in the starting lineup and had at least one PA. Counting starting games only avoids streaks being broken when a player appears in a substitute role with possibly limited PA opportunities (or none) to extend a streak. This means that games as a substitute may be interspersed within these streaks without affecting them, regardless of what a player did or didn’t accomplish in those substitute appearances.

Further to the treatment of substitute appearances within a streak:

• players effectively get a “mulligan” if they, in fact, break a streak in a substitute game
• OTOH, players are not rewarded if they extend a streak in such games

On the whole, I think this is a fair and balanced approach, but feel free to differ.

So, here are the 2012 Streaker Awards.

Note the last entry in the above table, of games with and without strikeouts. I was curious when strikeout streaks started getting longer than no-strikeout streaks. Adam Dunn’s 31-game strikeout streak in 2012 is the longest in-season streak of this century, and part of a 35 game streak begun at the end of the 2011 season. Here are the longest in-season streaks of earlier decades.

So, a pretty sudden shift from the 1940s to the 1950s, but relatively stable since then. That is, until we get to Big Donkey.

A rather different story when we look at streaks of not striking out. In 1929, Joe Sewell went 115 starting games without whiffing (see below), a mere 100 games longer than the top such streak of 2012.

So, the big change here occurred in the 1960s. It’s now been over 50 years since a player has had an in-season streak of 50 games or more without striking out.

However, a more recent trend to fewer and shorter streaks is evident. Juan Pierre has had two 30+ game streaks since 2000, the only player to have even one such streak. In the past five seasons, Jeff Keppinger has two 20+ game streaks, again the only player with even one. Thus, since 2008, strikeout streaks have become longer and more common than no-strikeout streaks, a first in MLB history.

I will follow up with a similar post on pitchers.