TCB Astros Fan Favorite March Madness Tournament Round 2 Wrap-up and A Look Ahead To Round 3

Round two of the TCB Astros Fan Favorite March Madness Tournament has been completed. There was only one good match-up in round two but there were also a couple upsets and one match-up that was a lot closer than I expected. We'll get to that below but first I want to adjust a couple dates, the schedule has the next round starting on the March 19, I will be moving that up a day to March 18 so Monday we will start the next round of voting. This only affects next round and I wanted to adjust it so I had a day in between rounds to do another one of these posts wrap-up posts.

Full details of the tournament can be found here in our introductory post.

Here's the latest bracket:

Closest match-up:

There was only one close match-up and that was the one that wrapped up today between 45 Carlos Perez and 49 Vincent Velasquez. Velasquez defeated Perez 49-43.

Biggest upset has Houston ties:

The biggest upset of the round came in the 33 George Springer vs 61 Ross Seaton match-up which I thought was going to be an easy win for Springer. I underestimated the hometown angle for Seaton who played his high school at Second Baptist School in Houston Texas and defeated Springer with a 131-99 final vote. I don't think he necessarily has a strong social media presence but he does have a Houston presence and this is a Houston based site so there is that.

Other upset I wasn't expecting:

I don't know if it's because 27 Chris Carter is new to the team or what but he lost pretty handily to 58 Adrian Houser 94-71. I'll be interested to see if Houser has joined the social media backed players or if people really liked him better than Carter.

Closer than I thought match-up:

36 Lance McCullers defeats 64 Chia-Jen Lo but it wasn't exactly an easy win for McCullers. The final vote total for the match-up was 98-70 in McCullers favor.

Social media power houses continue their dominance:

54 Brad Rodgers, 57 Andrew Aplin, 47 Asher Wojciechowski and 52 Aaron West all advanced to the sweet sixteen. Aplin had the toughest time beating out Domingo Santana with a final vote total of 179-95. West and Wojciechowski face the toughest challenges going forward as they face 36 Lance McCullers and 2 Bud Norris respectively.

Most interesting non-social media backed round three match-up

Four major league players remain in the tournament. Unfortunately, two of them will be facing off in the next round. 5 Lucas Harrell will face-off against battery mate 9 Jason Castros. I think Castro ultimately takes the match-up.

Committee Notes

• Regarding J.D. Martinez there was a clerical error in assigning him to the tournament so he was unfortunately left off and there is absolutely no way to re-insert him into the tournament. Maybe next year.
• I don't have a problem with the upsets we've seen so far and the social media backing. As I said in the introductory post I wasn't putting any stipulations on how someone should vote so I am more than happy to see the players themselves and friends and family members, who are their biggest fans get involved in this tournament. I went into this tournament not expecting anything other than a fun tournament to pass the time during Spring Training and I am more than happy with the results so far.