So this latest foray into the mathematics of baseball started when I started thinking about the new ABS challenge system. I have some insights about that which I’ll begin to discuss at some lull in the season — maybe when the Braves are up by 40 games in July — but when I started to lay out the strategic questions about when to challenge, I immediately ran into a problem that has bothered me for quite a while: what is the probable outcome when Batter A faces Pitcher B?
I think it’s incredibly odd that more effort isn’t put into this question; if you could answer it, you’d be able to predict the outcome of games much more accurately that I think people can now.