Cuban baseball is a strange thing these days. It’s minor-league level, but there are a few amazing players mixed in, like Jose Abreu and Yasiel Puig, who are capable of thriving in the MLB. It’s generally thought of as rundown, impoverished and hopelessly mired in the past–like Cuba itself during the age of Mighty Castro at Bat–but advanced analytics have found an unlikely home in the island nation. The opening of “Béisbol Prospectus,” a new SI piece by Eric Nusbaum:

“IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT in Havana’s historic Estadio Latinoamericano. Bottom of the 12th inning of the second game of a doubleheader. The hometown Industriales and Holguín are fighting for the fourth and final playoff spot in Cuba’s Serie Nacional.

Everyone still in the park—fan, player, coach, food vendor—is worn down to raw nerve. This game has seen a pivotal interference call, a runner thrown out at home and another doubled off second after tagging up early. Down 5–3 in the bottom of the eighth, the Industriales took a 6–5 lead, which they blew in the ninth.

Alejandro Aldama, 25, clings to a few rolled-up sheets of computer paper like they are a map to hidden treasure. He paces in the underground section of stands behind home plate. Watching the game from here, sunk below the infield grass, is like watching from a foxhole.

Aldama is cofounder and vice president of the Independent Group for Baseball Investigation (GIIB), Cuba’s first official sabermetric organization. The treasure map in his hand actually contains rosters and advanced stats. This year the GIIB is working with Industriales manager Lázaro Vargas, providing advanced statistical analysis, a first in Cuba for any team.

Four glaring light towers lean forward over the empty outfield bleachers and shine on Industriales outfielder Stayler Hernandez, who walks to the plate flirting with a .200 average. The fans above him whistle and blow noisemakers. Aldama wipes sweat from his brow. Vargas sits comfortably in the dugout as Hernandez settles into the lefthanded batter’s box.

SABERMETRICS—THE ADVANCED, computerized and occasionally counterintuitive analysis of baseball statistics—is beginning to take hold in Cuba.”