Known as Astros' science guy, Sig Mejdal to experiment with role as minor league coach

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - In Jeff Luhnow's five-plus years as general manager, the data-driven Astros haven't been shy in their willingness to challenge convention.

Count this latest experiment among their most unconventional yet.

The Astros will put their lead analyst, Sig Mejdal, in uniform as a "development coach" for their short-season Class A affiliate this year. While simultaneously fulfilling his special assistant to the GM duties, Mejdal will be embedded with the upstate New York-based Tri-City ValleyCats, riding the buses, eating the clubhouse meals and even hitting pregame fungoes.

Mejdal, a 51-year-old former NASA researcher who from 2012 to 2015 held the famously far-out title of Astros director of decision sciences, will be tasked with helping the Tri-City coaches and players understand and utilize the vast technologies available in today's game. He will be with the team for its entire 75-game schedule, which begins in mid-June and ends in early September.

The offbeat appointment could irk some around the industry, particularly coaches who have grinded for years for opportunities on a professional staff. The development coach position, a hybrid between field staff and analytical work, is one the Astros created before last season, though the two who occupied the role in 2016 had backgrounds as instructors and players.

Mejdal will be a fourth coach on Tri-City's staff, supporting first-year manager Morgan Ensberg, pitching coach Bill Murphy and hitting coach Jeremy Barnes. Luhnow said having a development coach has been "a successful model," prompting the team's decision this past offseason to expand it to the short-season level. Mejdal, according to Luhnow, offered to fill the role at Tri-City.

"I thought it would be a great opportunity for him to have a different type of experience, to be in uniform, to be with a staff, to understand from their perspective what they think about, how they go through the season," Luhnow said.

"I think we're going to learn a lot as an organization by having him be with the players and the staff basically 24/7 for the course of a few months."

The Astros declined to make Mejdal available to the Chronicle for comment about his new dual role. Mejdal, whose compromised email server was at the center of the Cardinals-Astros hacking scandal, has been Luhnow's right-hand man dating to 2005, their first year together in St. Louis' baseball operations department.

A trained engineer, Mejdal joined the Cardinals after working at Lockheed Martin and NASA. He followed Luhnow to the Astros before the 2012 season and after 31/2 years of holding baseball's most obscure front-office title became the team's special assistant to the GM for process improvement in October 2015.

Despite having to relocate from Houston for three months of the summer, a period that coincides with the always crucial July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, Mejdal will maintain his involvement in "everything that we're doing," according to Luhnow.

Fungo training

"Sig has spent 12 years in the industry, and so much of that has been talking to players and talking to coaches and out with our affiliates and around people in uniform," Luhnow said. "I don't think it's going to be a big leap for him to be around that environment full time.

"I think he's going to learn a lot from doing that. As a leader of the organization, the one thing that you don't have an opportunity to do is really understand what's happening at the front lines a lot. Even though it's not me doing it, this is a way for me to understand it."

Luhnow said he expects Mejdal to "come back with a lot of interesting thoughts and ideas about how we might do things better, whether it's have better spreads for the players or better travel - things that make their life easier that maybe we're not thinking about that we could help them with.

"Those are the types of things I'm hoping come out of this, in addition to obviously our players who are curious about how to utilize some of these new technologies, they're going to have one of the experts right there," he said. "It's going to be a great resource for them."

"Now, whether or not he can hit a fungo, we'll see."

Apparently, Mejdal has been hard at work attempting to learn proper fungo technique. Last Thursday morning, in an otherwise quiet batting cage on the minor league side of the Astros' spring training complex, he was spotted working one-on-one with Jeff Albert, the team's minor league hitting coordinator.

Sporting a blue-striped polo shirt, gray pants and black Nike sneakers, Mejdal wielded a black bat while Albert stood nearby, next to a bucket of balls. For about a half hour, Mejdal practiced tossing balls in the air and hitting them toward the fence that encloses the batting cage while Albert offered pointers and demonstrations.

"His stepson is a junior in high school who plays baseball, so in fact Sig had shoulder surgery last year because he was throwing BP so much to his stepson," Luhnow said. "I've watched him do drills with his stepson and throw BP. For a NASA guy, he's a lot more athletic than people give him credit for."

Four counterparts

Mejdal will be one of five development coaches the Astros scatter across their farm system this year. The other four will be assigned to full-season affiliates. Considering Mejdal's other responsibilities, short-season Class A made the most sense for his appointment.

Aaron DelGuidice, who last season roved between Class AAA Fresno and advanced Class A Lancaster, will work exclusively in Class AAA this year. A former pitcher at the Division II University of Tampa, DelGuidice came to the Astros having interned with the Rays, Yankees and Orioles, instructed at a baseball facility in Manhattan, and worked as an operations statistician for STATS LLC.

Tommy Kawamura is the other returnee to the position and will be assigned to Class AA Corpus Christi after splitting his time last year between Class AA and Class A Quad Cities. Kawamura held a baseball operations internship with the Mets and a video scouting internship with Baseball Info Solutions and played infield at Division III Willamette University in Salem, Ore., before joining the Astros.

Former Astros pitcher Mickey Storey and former Division I University of Maryland Eastern Shore pitching coach Jason Bell were hired this past offseason as development coaches for Class A Advanced Buies Creek and Class A Quad Cities, respectively.

"Other organizations call it a fourth coach. That's essentially what it is," Luhnow said. "The demands of the video (study) and the technology and the extra work and all of the medical, all of the stuff that we're doing, it's just hard to ask our hitting coach or our pitching coach or our manager, 'Hey, take on all of these extra responsibilities and write these reports and all of that.'

"So we've added another resource to the full-season levels, and Sig's going to do it for Tri-City."