A blog analyzing Major League Baseball through the lens of Astrology
Welcome to Astrology Baseball, a project where I arrange MLB players into teams based on their astrological signs, and then pit those teams against each other in mock fantasy seasons.
2021 All-Acquired American League
My goal of this project is ultimately to look back at Fantasy Astrology lineups through baseball history, but I find myself getting caught up in the excitement current season. So I’ll start devoting one of my three weekly posts to 2021 (Tuesdays), while still getting through one year of FABL history (Fridays) plus some year-related commentary (Sundays). This week’s 2021 post is the continuation of the All-Acquired analysis I started last Tuesday.
Derek Jeter and the Hall of Fame
As you know if you pay attention to the Hall of Fame, not one player was elected for enshrinement this season. This means that the last players elected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America were Derek Jeter and Larry Walker. And the last time one of that duo made the starting lineup of a Fantasy Astrology Baseball League team was Cap’n Jeets for the 2012 Cancer Crabs.
2012 Astrology Awards Recap
As I’ve mentioned probably a dozen times already, Aries had a stranglehold on the top of the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League from 2013 to 2018, leading all teams in fantasy point totals in five out of those six years. The year before that run of excellence, my home sign, the Cancer Crabs, came out on top by the slimmest of margins!
2021 All-Acquired National League
Before I was an Astrology Baseball junkie, I was a transactions/roster construction junkie. I do realize the irony here insofar as Astrology Baseball doesn’t provide for roster moves of any kind, since a player’s sign is determined at birth and can’t change (except in the rare cases where I get the dates wrong).
All-Andy/Andrew MLB Team
2013 was the last year in the fine career of left handed starting pitcher Andy Pettitte. In Pettitte’s 18 seasons, he amassed 60.6 career Wins Above Replacement according to Baseball Reference - the highest in MLB history by a player named Andy. Perhaps that’s why his name comes up first when you type “Andy” into the Baseball-Reference.com search bar.
2013 Astrology Awards Recap
There is technically the possibility for the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League to have different configurations than the four-division format I’ve been presenting. Since each sign can be categorized by the three Essences (as well as four Elements), we could have six divisions instead of four. This would give us a Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable division in both of the Polarities, each with two teams.
Ruling Planets in Astrology Baseball
The concept of ruling planets - “a lens through which you can better understand” each sign - is something that doesn’t have to do with sports at all. Well, actually, since planets are named after Roman gods, there could be some connection between their properties and different aspects of the game. Mars for batting (the god of war supports a good offensive attack), Jupiter for pitching (he threw lightning bolts), Saturn for grizzled veterans (Bringer of Old Age), Neptune for… rainouts?
2021 Top 100 Negative Polarity
In my last post, I took a break from my reverse chronological trip through Fantasy Astrology Baseball League history to analyze the players included in the newly-released list of MLB Network’s top 100 who were born under Positive astrological signs. I will now continue on the same path, looking at the players in the top 100 who play for Negative Polarity signs.
2021 Top 100 - Positive Polarity
In honor of the Astrological shift from Aquarius to Pisces, MLB Network completed their initial top 100 list for the 2021 season. OK, I know that’s not the reason why they finished that feature on this particular date: it’s because of pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training. Either way, I’m calling an audible and interrupting my reverse-chronological trip through Fantasy Astrology Baseball League history to bring you some analysis of MLBN’s Top 100.
2014 Astrology Awards Recap
It’s no surprise to see Aries at the top, since I already talked about their stretch of dominance from 2013 to 2018. But it’s interesting that after the Rams, we get two more positive signs (Libra and Gemini), in a wide gap before we get our first negative league team (Capricorn). And while the Goats are the fourth-highest scoring team overall, their point total falls just 200 points above the median.
2015 Five Year Recap
Since we’ve now hit five full seasons going reverse-chronologically through Fantasy Astrology Baseball League history, I’m going to return to my astrology lineups by year document to embark on a Five Year Retrospective. I’ll be focusing on players who spent the most years out of these five in a sign’s starting lineup, rather than all-time greats.
2015 Astrology Awards Recap
2015 is the only year between 2013 and 2018 where Aries was not the overall points leader among FABL teams, as they were eclipsed by Libra. Both signs would enter a fairly steady decline heading into the end of the decade, which mirrors a decline in the top end of fantasy points leaguewide.
2016 and the Curse of the Billy Goat
If you believe in a pseudo-science like Astrology, you’re also likely to believe in paranormal concepts such as curses. One such curse that is related to baseball, if not astrology, is the Curse of the Billy Goat, which supposedly afflicted the Chicago Cubs until 2016.
2016 Astrology Awards Recap
2016 will hold a place in American history as the year in which one curse was broken, immediately before another was placed on the land. The first curse I’m referring to is the Curse of the Billy Goat, which ended on November 2, 2016 when the Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series after a 108-year drought. The second is the curse of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, which began six days later on a truly traumatizing Election Day.
2017 Astros Sign Stealing Implications
It’s impossible to know how the 2017 World Series would have played out if both teams were on a level playing field. But we can look back at which astrological signs benefitted most from the Astros’ cheating efforts in 2017, and deduce whether the infamous sign stealing scandal had an effect on the fantasy astrological landscape.
2017 Astrology Awards Recap
As we continue back in reverse chronological order of Fantasy Astrology Baseball League seasons, let’s look at some three-year trends from the last three full years of Major League Baseball seasons.
Aries 2013-2018 Retrospective
Aries led all of Fantasy Astrology Baseball from 2013 to 2018. I don’t know what cosmic forces were at play to give the Rams so many great players during this stretch, but I am prepared to track these players through the years in graphical form.
2018 Astrology Awards Recap
Since the 2020 season was greatly truncated due to COVID, 2018 and 2019 allow us to do a year-over-year comparison of how each sign performed over a similar sample size. So here’s a graph of fantasy point totals of all 12 FABL signs plotted next to each other.
2019 Water Division and Positional Eligibility
The most curious aspect of the point totals from 2019 is how closely all the signs are grouped together. The range between the top scoring Pisces Fish (31,392 points) and the bottom-feeding Taurus Bulls (26,970) was just under 4,500 (4,422 to be exact), the smallest range of any FABL “season” in the past 30 years.
2019 Astrology Awards Recap
Given that 2020 was such an unprecedented year in terms of Major League Baseball seasons, it was also an unprecedented year in terms of fantasy baseball statistics. You have to go back to 2019, the last year of MLB normality (and indeed the last year of general life normality for so many of us), to look at a more standard Astrology Baseball landscape.