-P- Travis Sawchik has an interesting article about infielder Cole Figueroa, who really sounds like the Pirates' kind of player:
Seeing the vast amount of data pouring into the game, and thinking about how to take advantage of it, he began to teach himself code, ‘R,' or programming language.
He spent hours at Coursera.org — the Web site reassures a new visitor one can "Code Yourself!" — where there are step-by-step instructions in learning how to code and program.
With his nascent coding skills, he began to research and refine data given to him by the Rays, though the Rays kept much of their data off limits from their proprietary database.