I don't know how to describe this, but the thing that made me the most excited about the return of baseball was an e-mail that I got on Friday from the proprietor of the TOOTBLAN Tracker asking if I wanted to run a graphic about the Pirates' 2013 TOOTBLAN review. TOOTBLAN, if you don't spend much time on Twitter and are unfamiliar with the term," is short for "Thrown Out On The Bases Like A Nincompoop," an acronym designed to describe Ryan Theriot in his days with the Cubs. It's now interenet shorthand for any unforced error on the basepaths. The Pirates, as you'll see, were awfully good at getting thrown out on the basepaths last year. It is, of course, fair to note that FanGraphs scored the team as above-average on the whole as baserunners, so it's possible that this aggressiveness pays off in less memorable ways.
Anyway, you can check out a .jpg version of the infographic both below and see the whole thing at TOOTBLAN Tracker, where it's fully interactive with mouse-overs and videos. The baseball season is almost here!
