Over the last few years, there have been some players who have publicly acknowledged that they enjoy and use analytics to help themselves on the field. Zack Greinke, Brandon McCarthy, and Glen Perkins are some of the more notable players who have embraced nerd stats, and guys like Craig Breslow — with his molecular biophysics degree from Yale — buck the stereotype of the typical jock. But thanks to this great Travis Sawchik profile on Cole Figueroa, we might have a new contender for the title of King of the Ballplayer Nerds.

But he wasn’t interested in baseball analytics until he was traded to the pioneering Tampa Bay Rays in 2010, his third year in pro baseball.

“I said ‘OK, it’s important to them. Why isn’t it important to me?’” said Figueroa of analytics.

Figueroa said in the spring, in an auditorium setting, the Rays hold hitters’ meetings. He had never been in meetings like these. For example, Rays coaches spoke about evaluating the quality of hitter not by batting average but by batted ball exit velocity.

“Depending on who you were you could sleep through (the meetings), you could take exactly what they are giving you,” Figueroa said, “or you could expand upon it.”

Figueroa expanded.

“What can I do to become the most optimal player?” Figueroa asked himself. “What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses?”

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.

He created models to understand how a player with his skills would age. He studied players with similar physical and statistical profiles. He studied what skills would age well, which would age poorly. In three consecutive seasons in Triple-A, he improved his on-base percentage.

“People think coding is some foreign language … in a sense where it’s only something really intelligent people can do,” Figueroa said. “And it’s really totally the opposite. Anyone can code.”

The whole thing is a great read, and even includes Figueroa giving hitting instruction to a teammate based on things he’d read from Alan Nathan, but the fact that Figueroa is writing his own code puts him on another level. I’d imagine that even if he doesn’t end up having a particularly great career on the field, every team in baseball has probably already penciled Figueroa’s name down for a potential front office or coaching job.