Baseball: the pitch
Baseball's live state updates every pitch. The count shifts outcomes before the ball is even put in play: hitters do markedly better ahead in the count than behind. Base-out state then sets how many runs the inning is likely to produce.
| Base-out state | What it implies |
|---|---|
| Bases empty, 0 outs | The inning’s baseline scoring chance |
| Runner on 2nd, 0 outs | Scoring chance for the inning rises a lot |
| Bases loaded, 2 outs | Big swing: one hit scores multiple runs, one out ends it |
PBEcast shows this state directly — the diamond, outs, count, the live pitch, the batter's splits against the pitcher's hand and the pitcher's arsenal (pitch mix, velocity, CSW%).
Basketball and football: the possession
Basketball is a sequence of roughly equal possessions; pace (possessions per game) sets how many chances each player gets, so a projection is really rate × opportunities. Football possessions are fewer and more uneven, so down, distance and field position carry most of the information.
Combat sports: the round
A fight's state is the round, the clock, the scheduled rounds (3 or 5) and — in boxing and in decisions — the scorecards so far. Scheduled rounds are not a detail: they set how long a finish has to happen. The UFC Fight Simulator refuses to simulate a bout until the official card confirms 3 or 5 rounds rather than guessing.
Round-level data is thin: a five-round fight is at most five observations, and many fights end early. Round-by-round predictions are much less reliable than fight-level winner probabilities — which is why the simulator does not publish round winners or finish times.