Introducing The Inaugural TCB Astros Fan Favorite March Madness Tournament

Welcome to the Astros tournament to end all Astros tournaments. With college basketball getting ready to kick off their march madness we at TCB came up with the idea of hosting our own tournament that will take us through the Spring Training season.

During Spring Training TCB will be hosting a 64 player March Madness tournament to determine which Astro is the communities favorite player. For the next five weeks we will have 63 match-ups in six rounds of votes. The winner of each match-up leading up to the final will be determined by the player who gets the most votes in a 24-hour public poll. The winner advances; the loser exits the tournament. The final vote will last three days and lead us into the regular season.

Click on the image to see a bigger version of the bracket

Voting

Each match-up will feature a short description of the player, highlighting some of the positive things he's done in his professional career. A poll will be available for 24-hours to vote on your favorite player or the player who you think should advance to the next round. The winner will be the player who receives the most votes.

The guidelines for voting are your own, i.e. vote how you want to vote: the best current player; the best future player; the most talented player; the funniest player; your own personal favorite player; the player with the best intangibles; the player with the best statistics; the most proven player; the grittiest player. Again, vote how you want to vote this is supposed to be fun. If you make a compelling case for a player in the comments I just may use that in the next round should that player advance.

Methodology for Players and Rankings

I took an objective approach to deciding which players made it into the tournament and how they were ranked. I started with the 40-man roster and ranked each major league player on the roster by FanGraphs WAR. Next I added both Rule 5 selections and ranked by selection round after the 40-man roster. Finally, I added prospects to the list and ranked them by our own TCB prospect rankings. Any prospect on the 40-man roster made it into the tournament which is why Chia-Jen Lo, ranked T-50th by us, made the tournament and not someone like Tyler Heineman, who was ranked 33rd by us, just missed making it into the tournament.

Initially, we had Jed Lowrie and Fernando Rodriguez on the list but they were replaced by Chris Carter and Brad Peacock. Max Stassi did not make the tournament because he wasn't ranked by us.

Tournament Format and Schedule

The first round will be February 23 - March 5, 32 match-ups (three posts a day).

The second round will be March 7 - March 15, 16 match-ups (two posts a day).

The first sectional round will be March 19 - March 22, 8 match-ups (two posts a day).

The second sectional round will be March 23 - March 26, 4 match-ups (one post a day).

The semi-finals will be March 27-28, 2 match-ups (one post a day).

The finals will be March 29 - March 31, this vote will last three days with the winner being announced Monday April 1, 2013.

Bracket Fun

As with any bracket challenge the image above is downloadable by right clicking and selecting save image. You are more than welcome to download it and fill it out and turn it in before Saturday to SBN.crawfishboxes@gmail.com. I don't have anything to give away, maybe next year, but I will announce your awesomeness in a future podcast or post.