Not your father’s baseball stats.

It seems more and more these days that you can’t be a baseball fan without an encyclopedia of statistics to back up your every assertion. The time-honored tradition of watching a game and making observations has been rendered inadequate by the SABR-metric explosion of the 80′s and 90′s. Value over Replacement Player? Extrapolated Runs? Defense-independent ERA? I’d explain these for the benefit of those unfamiliar, but frankly, I’m not sure I understand them myself. Sure, these can be important, but they do seem to be an awful lot of work.

Somewhere along the line, the “fun” aspect of basbeall knowledge dried up. Luckily, there are still those striving to counteract that: Flip Flop Fly Ball is the brainchild of illustrator/designer Craig Robinson. Devoted to the marriage of baseball statistics and infographics, the site is stocked with gorgeous visual representations of statistics from the quirkier side of America’s pastime. How much money would baseball have lost if all the stolen bases in 2008 were actually stolen? In which direction do batters in all the major-league ballparks face? And really, how tall is that obnoxious, faded green wall in Boston?

Doesn't seem that monstrous to me...

So, whether you enjoy the infographics, the baseball knowledge, or both, head over to Flip Flop Fly Ball and indulge in a little baseball-stat-related fun before you break out your calculator to determine Albert Pujol’s Gross Production Average ( [1.8(OPS)+SLG]/4 = .3779). You’ll be glad you did.