Benefit of the Doubt: The Cruel Umpire @ BtB

As opposed to last week's approach, this episode looked at how the zone actually gets worse for the pitcher as the run expectancy of the inning increases.

Out states are represented by color, while the base state is represented as text (bases empty = ___ ; runners at the corners = x_x ; bases loaded = xxx). As you can see, the relationship is nearly the perfect inverse of the one we observe with ball-strike count. As the run value of the base-out state increases, the zone actually becomes less favorable to the pitcher; the umpire is cruel instead of compassionate.

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