Baseball's optimization problem is that it lends itself too readily for it. I guess the inventors hadn't counted on statistical science to come get them, but the problem is that it's just too break-down-able:

- There's only one team that can score at a time.

- The action is start-stop. You have a clear outcome for every single pitch.

- Success is a funnel. Get guy to next base, then the next, etc. Defense is the opposite.

- Players tend to have one job, whose effectiveness is harder to dispute than most other sports.

- Large number of games, high scores. The law of large numbers drags the results towards the mean.

Compare this to soccer. There's huge interest in using stats to optimize soccer, but it's hard because:

- Attackers are defenders and defenders are attackers. What's Ronaldo's weakness? He doesn't defend well, in contrast to what most modern strikers are required to do.

- You can have the ball a lot or a little, it doesn't mean you will win.

- It's not even obvious who is attacking and who is defending, there's no fixed phases. Gegenpressung for instance, are you really attacking when you have the ball but it's in your own third and the other team's strikers are bothering you?

- Low scores, fewer games. You can optimize, but you can't make the dice fall in your favor without enough rolls.