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.
Aries Tarot: The Emperor
For a brief time, around the turn of the last decade (counting from 0-9, of course), I developed an interest in the Tarot. The card associated with Aries (the current sign) is The Emperor. The Baseball Tarot’s version of this card is The Legend, which represents “ Authority – Ambition – An Ideal in Material Form.”
Top Fantasy Point Scorers 2007-19
I know deep down that fantasy points are a far-from perfect method to determining the usefulness of MLB players. But there is something appealing about boiling down a player’s performance into one clean number. And if you prefer Wins Above Replacement, I compared the top fantasy point scores in the league with the bWAR scores of those same players to see if there is a connection between the two.
2007 Astrology Awards Recap
Baseball fans might remember the 2007 MLB season for the epic late-season collapse of the Mets, as the Phillies overcame a 7 game deficit with just over two weeks to go. It’s impossible to tell if the FABL had a similar down-to-the-wire divisional chase without doing hundreds of week-by-week calculations, but the two teams at the top (Pisces (33,564) and Taurus (33,523)) finished with point totals that were so incredibly close that it’s basically a tie.
2021 Earth Signs Preview
My preview of the 2021 Fantasy Astrology Baseball League season concludes today with the three Earth signs. For positional commentary (at least in the infield) I’ll be taking into account my new roster structure for the league, where shortstops are now officially allowed to play second base, and any infielder can slot in at first. Also, fantasy rankings will be up to date as of Opening Day.
Astrology Team Nicknames
Prior to the 2008 season, the Major League franchise in Tampa Bay changed their name from “Devil Rays” to simply “Rays.” This caused me to look back at the nicknames I’ve bestowed on the Fantasy Astrology Baseball teams and ask: Which, if any, could we consider changing? And what are some possible replacements?
2008 Astrology Awards Recap
This is showing my age, but the 2008 World Series was the first one that occurred after I graduated from college, so I got to watch the Philadelphia Phillies defeat the newly-christened Tampa Bay Rays on a hi-def TV from a sports bar stool, rather than whatever was in my dorm’s lounge. The biggest news about the 2008 FABL season is that the Sagittarius Archers scored the most overall fantasy points in the league.
2021 Fire Signs Preview
This post will primarily serve as a preview to the 2021 Fire Signs, including the sign that we’re currently in: Aries. But I want to lead with an announcement about the structure of the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League itself: I replaced the “2B” slot with a more inclusive “middle infielder,” and did away with “1B” in favor of a general “IF.”
Real-Life All-Decade Awards Winners
A big part of this project has been determining which players would have won the major league-wide awards in each hypothetical season of the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League. But recently I got to thinking about how the astrological signs are represented among players who have won the real-life versions of these awards. And with a decade of full FABL seasons now in the books, here are the signs of MLB’s major awards from 2010 to 2019.
2009 Astrology Awards Recap
Apparently no one told Libra about the change in decade, because their three-year run at the top of FABL’s fantasy point leaderboard has now spanned from 2009 to 2011. That crosses the decade line no matter how you cut it, which is one reason why it’s not ideal to divide groups of seasons into artificial constructs such as “decades,” but it’s the best we’ve got so far.
2021 Water Signs Preview
When I first did the initial tally of points for the 2020 season, I calculated that Cancer had finished in second place behind Aquarius. Upon closer inspection, I found that Virgo actually inched ahead of my home sign due to a technicality. However, I’m previewing the 2021 Water signs next, because it’s my blog and I get to decide how things are done.
2010 Ten Year Astrology Recap
Traditionalists might count 2010 as the end of a decade. We normally count from one to ten, so it does make a certain amount of sense that the 2000’s would consist of 2001 thru 2010. Either way, now that we have ten FULL FABL seasons under our belt, I thought this would be a good time to break out my year-by-year spreadsheet and do some analysis.
2010 Astrology Awards Recap
2010 marks the tenth anniversary of the last completed Major League season. But the 2010 season was the eleventh season since the last completed MLB campaign. Don’t ask me how that works, I never quite got a full grasp of subtraction. Either way, since my database only counts FULL seasons, we now have ten data points from which to draw conclusions about the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League from the last decade.
2021 Air Signs Preview
In a lot of ways, the part of the baseball offseason that corresponds with Pisces season is my favorite part. It’s where a projected lineup enthusiast such as myself can really shine. This week, I’m showcasing how the three Air signs look heading into 2021, including the 2020 champion Aquarius.
Top 50 Wins Above Replacement
Last week, I looked at some of the players who were most recently elected to the MLB Hall of Fame and how they fit into the broader Astrology Baseball landscape. This time, I’d like to shift my focus slightly to the all-time Wins Above Replacement leaderboard (according to Baseball Reference).
2011 Astrology Awards Recap
Since 2012 was the first year where I ran a season-long online fantasy league simulation for the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League, I would have used fantasy points from 2011 to determine season-opening rosters and lineups. Thus, I likely would have started off the project with the assumption that Libra, Aries, Virgo, and Pisces were going to be the league powerhouses, and by and large, I would have been right.
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.