The Houston Astros' Willy Taveras has just extended his hitting streak to 30 games, beating out a dribbler toward third base in the first inning at Pittsburgh (I get most Astro and Texas Ranger games on cable TV in Lubbock, Texas, where I live).

The 30-game mark is when I'll generally start to write about hitting streaks. Thirty is a nice round number, and is a little over halfway to Joe DiMaggio's record of 56 games with at least one hit per contest.

It'll probably be several more games before I start presenting calculations of Taveras's probability of catching DiMaggio. To get a feel for the nature of these calculations, however, you can look at this write-up I did for the Phillies' Chase Utley, back when he had a nice streak going (which reached 35 games before ending).