Sig Mejdal makes the move from the Cardinals to the Astros:

The Astros boosted their commitment to a data-driven existence under new general manager Jeff Luhnow and CEO George Postolos with the hiring of Sig Mejdal as the club’s director of decision sciences.

In plain English?

“Really someone to oversee the architecture and ongoing operation of all the systems that we’re going to utilize to make better baseball decisions,” Luhnow said.

It’s appropriate that Sig now works for the Astros, as he used to work for NASA. I first became acquainted with him when I worked for Baseball Info Solutions. Sig had done some excellent work on the frequency of player injuries, a subject that melded with his work for the space agency. The Astros may not put a very good team on the field this year, but they have a first class front office, and I would expect them the get better quickly.