"In a previous stage of this wandering professional existence, Sig Mejdal was at NASA solving the mysteries of the human body in conjunction with those solving the mysteries of the universe.

Finally, he has moved on to a difficult job.

As the Astros' new director of decision sciences, Mejdal (pronounced my-dell) is tasked with figuring out the mysteries of baseball's last-place team by using every piece of data within his virtual reach.

Nine years after the season chronicled by the 2011 movie Moneyball, the Oakland Athletics' advantages on the surface have dried up as other teams have caught up. The thinking behind them, though, is still present, and the Astros hope to be the pioneers of the new advantage or inefficiency.

"All the pieces of information that you can imagine that we evaluate on an everyday basis to make decisions, we're going to do that in a systematic way," said new Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow, who brought Mejdal with him from the St. Louis Cardinals, where Luhnow ran the scouting department and Mejdal served as director of amateur draft analytics. "Utilizing information technology capabilities and pretty sophisticated tools and techniques.""