That's right, Part II of our epic adventure through the lands of Westeros, er, Astros FanFest is hitting right now. If you missed Part I, here's a link...now, onto the diary.

12:01 p.m. - After the open panel, our merry band of bloggers went upstairs into the Club Level for the meat of FanFest. First thing we see? Actual meat, in the form of a nachos competition. The competitors were Texas Brisket versus Cheeseburger. There was a pretty good line, so I did not try either, but c'mon. Brisket had to win, right? BBQ is delicious.

12:05 p.m. - Behind the Great Nacho Debate of 2012 was an alumni autograph signing for fans. This FanFest event wasn't entirely free. Fans had to pay $10 to get autographs from current players, but the alumni signings were free. Oh, and before you get all bent out of shape about this new ownership group pinching pennies, the money went to support the Astros' Urban Youth Academy. So, you know, it's a good cause.

At any rate, the biggest question from the blogosphere at this table of alumni is who the heck some of the players were. We got clarification on some of them, like Scipio Spinks, but the one that floored everyone there was the inclusion of...Charlie Hayes!

Everyone remembers Hayes from his Yankee days, but few remember the 31 games and 58 plate appearances he got for the 2001 (division-winning) Houston Astros. I did, but I was the only one and I even had the years off, thinking he played around 2002 or 2003. Oh well. I guess when trying to fill out these alumni events, sometimes you have to move down the bench a bit.

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In Baseball the Sophomore Slump is generally referred to as a player’s second season or sophomore effort that fails to live up to the performance displayed by the said player during their rookie season. Since the Astros fielded a total of 20 different rookies at some point last season and thus have several potential candidates who could experience a sophomore slump I decided to take a closer look at how a player’s rookie season and sophomore season compares to each other. In this article we will look solely at position player’s offensive production, and I plan on hopefully getting something similar for pitchers posted later in the week.

A few details about the sample

I chose to sample rookies who debuted during the time frame of the years 2000-2010, and compare that to their second season in the majors. According to MLB's official rules a player is considered a rookie as long as they do not exceed 130 major league at-bats or accumulate more than 45 days on the active 25-man roster during previous seasons. Because determining the amount of days spent on the active roster was difficult, I chose to determine rookie status based on players who have not previously exceeded 130 at-bats during a season. I also chose to use the season in which the player broke the 130 at-bat plateau as their rookie season and not the season in which they first experienced the majors. As an example Lance Berkman played in 34 games in 1999 and accumulated 106 plate appearances, but did not surpass the 130 at-bat mark until the following season, therefore that season is used as his rookie season for this exercise.

2000-2010 Rookie/Sophomore Season Comparison

There were a total of 607 position player rookies who appeared in the majors from 2000-2010. The chart below lists the accumulated averages of each year’s rookie class’ walk percentage, strikeout percentage, batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. Stats highlighted in yellow represent which season’s performance (Rookie or Sophomore) was more productive, and stats highlighted in blue represent no change from the first season to the second season. All stats used for this year were gathered from the Fangraphs database.

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At the opening panel of the Astros’ FanFest on Saturday, I had a pretty jarring realization. New Houston general manager Jeff Luhnow looks almost exactly like ESPN.com and Grantland.com sportswriter Bill Simmons.

Really, it’s uncanny. I couldn’t stop thinking about it as he gave reasoned answers about how Houston is attempting to make itself relevant again. So, I thought I’d steal a page from Simmon’s book and sum up the FanFest event with a running diary. Enjoy…

9:30 a.m. – Because Port Arthur is not Houston, I had to get on the road pretty early. Luckily, the rain that has poured on the area for the past week decided to take a day off. Saturday’s weather was the first time I’ve worn sunglasses in a month.

10:45 a.m. – First time I haven’t had to pay for parking at Minute Maid Park. It’s a nice feeling.

10:48 a.m. – It’s cold both inside and outside MMP on this day. And guess who didn’t bring a jacket? The lesson, as always, is I’m an idiot.

10:50 a.m. – I get inside with my freshly minted press credentials for just that day and meet the other writers who are covering the event. The Astros, through social media director Alyson Footer, invited a number of bloggers and writers to attend in an official capacity with an opportunity to interview Brad Mills, Bud Norris and J.D. Martinez. Which is why I spent my Saturday in Houston hanging out with a big chunk of the Houston Astros blogosphere.

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While CRPerry13 was educating us on slugging I was putting together these links for a delightful Sunday afternoon.

The Offbeat

Astros exec asking $3.2M in Bunker Hill Village | Ultimate Memorial
Tal's home is up for sale.

Rangers Mistakenly Attempt To Woo Roy Oswalt By Touting Dallas' Gay Nightlife Scene | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
Astro fans will appreciate this.

You May Say I'm A Dreamer: Houston Astros | January
By Garrett Wilson

Ultimate Astros " Hoffman: One Astro’s short but stellar career
By Ken Hoffman

The Platoon Advantage: 2012 Topps: My Last Year of Collecting
By Cee Angi

The Non-Astros

Money and wins
By Dave Studeman

2012 Sabermetric Teams: The Market for Saber Players | FanGraphs Baseball
By Bradley Woodrum

The State of Sabermetrics in the College Game | FanGraphs Baseball
By Eno Sarris

What Is Sabermetrics? And Which Teams Use It? | FanGraphs Baseball
By Bradley Woodrum

How Much Risk Is Worth Additional Upside? | FanGraphs Baseball
By Dave Cameron

Draft and Astro links after the jump...

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Next month my things to do list include:

• Sleep
• Plant the seeds of baseball obsession in my daughter
• Prepare for my trip to Kissimmee, Florida.
• Beat Mass Effect 3

Baseball season tends to get a bit chaotic for me. I watch 150+ games via MLB.TV and try to get to Atlanta for a live game or two when the Astros are in town. I tend to schedule stuff around my baseball obsession, especially day games, so typically my nights are shot and the grass will grow a little bit longer than I'd like. That doesn't mean I don't attend family functions or even go out anymore, it just means all my friends have gotten married and typically decline any sort of male interaction.

I consider myself lucky that I found one who has supported my baseball obsession and put up with my gaming addiction (see: Mass Effect 3). She also doesn't boss me around or guilty me into staying put at the house. Which really isn't a bad thing considering she's the one that wanted to get the pool table, but I digress.

I live on the East Coast which means a majority of the games I watch typically start at 8:05PM EST and end some where around 11:00 PM EST. If the game goes into extra's or I have game recap duties that night I'm pushing midnight before I get to bed. With a 6 AM wake up call in my future, doing that four nights a week tends to wear on me. Sure I could catch up on the weekends but my toddler typically has other ideas.

But it's all good, because we make sacrifices for the things we love.

Speaking of my daughter I found this wonderful game on the internet. She turns three next month and is starting to pick up more and more things. Meaning it's the time in every kids life when their parents begin to push their own obsessions on them. I'd like to think I'm better than this, but I'm not.

My final "to do" in preparing for the season is making a trip down to Florida to see the Astros play. Due to the schedule we'll actually be in Kissimmee for one game, but we picked a weekend in which they'd be playing no more than two hours away from the ball park. I'm excited as it would be the first time I've ever gone to Spring Training. If anyone has any suggested dinning venues and/or regular tips I'd love to hear them.

What are some of the things you're doing to prepare for the season? For college students are you trying to get ahead of your school work? Are you trying to build up some good rapport with your significant other so that you can stay up way past your bed time? Are you trying to get more rest like me? Or going to Spring Training?

Or am I flying solo on this one.

Yesterday, Baseball Prospectus released the first 2012 iteration of their annual stat projection system, PECOTA. Please note that this is a projection system, not a prediction system. It's a fine line and sometimes BP writers get huffy when PECOTA is incorrectly labeled.

As the release of the inaugural PECOTAs are always, for me, a momentous occasion on par with Christmas, Halloween, Guy Fawkes Day, and International Talk Like A Pirate Day, I gleefully neglected work and family to fire up Microsoft Excel to wade through the prognostications.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with PECOTA, it's a baseball stat projection system named after Bill Pecota, as average a player as there ever was. The projections are based on quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and super string theory, where the end result is a collection of stats that represents the weighted average of the different calculation iterations.

For the type of people who fight Saber Boy for a living, what this means is that the projections represent the most likely performance of a player. I'm done trying to explain it. If you want to know more, Google is available.

Anyway, I dove into the Astros' PECOTA projections, starting with the hitters, and my comments are below.

NOTE: The article image has nothing to do with the Astros or with this article. I just thought it looked funny.

• PECOTA lists Carlos Lee at 200 pounds. I've heard of people being in the best shape of their life at Spring Training, but dang. If PECOTA is right, Carlos Lee now only weighs 30 pounds more than Jose Altuve and makes Chris Snyder look like Goliath at 220 lbs. Maybe all of the misplaced mockery from the Astros.com message boards finally got to him? Carlos, man, it's time to pick up the hamburgers again or we'll have to change your nickname to El Caballito.
• Chris Johnson is projected for 54 plate appearances. We spent last week discussing if Johnson is primed for a breakout and should get the majority of the starts at third base. If PECOTA is correct, then Johnson is headed back to AAA. I'm going against PECOTA on this one. CJ will get at least 55 plate appearances.
• Catchers are only projected for 307 plate appearances. This projection implies that the Astros will be playing catcher-less for about half of the season. While of dubious legality, this is certainly a strategy that has never been tried before, and it should be interesting to see if the ploy is successful. Perhaps the Astros will play Downs and Paredes at third simultaneously in lieu of a catcher, in order to negate infield defensive problems.

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It appears that several members of my twitter feed feel that with the Super Bowl now over baseball season has begun. The NBA, NHL and March Madness might have something to say about that, but I'll play along.

While baseball still does have two months until it engulfs our lives, pitchers and catchers report in less than two weeks and a week or so after that Florida and Arizona will again be filled with the crack of the bat and the whizzing of fastballs. With that in mind here are the Astros Spring Training story lines to keep an eye on during the month designated March Madness.

Who Wins the Third Base Job

It seems that the battle is between Jimmy Paredes and Chris Johnson despite my best efforts to get Matt Downs thrown in the conversation. Paredes has the defensive upside while Johnson has the power upside and Downs apparently has the pine upside.

Clack has already discussed in-depth Johnson's upside and ability to bounce back from his sophomore slump. I'll add that when Johnson went down to AAA last year he posted a BB% of 10.6 which is encouraging. With a .383 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) Paredes has got some serious regression coming his way. Whats interesting about his case is that he also struck out at a 26.3% of the time which is high, even for someone like Johnson. Paredes strikeout number had never been above 20% in the minors until the 2011 season (20.7% at AA).

Paredes strikeout rate could be a case of being rushed to the majors; spending more time in the minors could help his development. Let's also not forget that he only recently started playing third base on a full-time basis and still needs some work at the hot corner. In the minors he's played 112 games at third base and 197 at second base.

In limited playing time the pine rider posted a .276/.347/.518 line accompanied by a .315 BABIP. At the third base position that's an above average offensive player. Defensively he's closer to Johnson than he is to Paredes. Thing is Downs has been shifted around quite a bit in the infield as well and has even found a little time in the outfield, so given some solid time at one position we could see some improvements. Downs is probably better suited for second base but you can't ignore that offensive production at the third base position, even if it regresses a bit this season.

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