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.
2005 Astrology Awards Recap
Two important things started in the 2005 season: the tenure of the Washington Nationals franchise playing in the nation’s capitol, and suspensions under MLB’s new drug policy. While there were no Leos suspended this time around, I would venture to say that the Lions make up the majority of high profile PED cases, including numbers 1 and 4 on the all-time home run list.
Taurus Season Injury Report
Now that the zodiacal wheel has turned into Taurus season, I’d like to use this moment of transition to detail some of the players who have transitioned in or out of their team’s lineup over the first two weeks of the season. I’ll focus primarily on injuries, but I won’t ignore any particularly eye-popping hot streaks that could elevate a player from bench role to starter over the long haul.
Home Run Leaders by Sign
In 2006, one of baseball’s most famous steroid users reached a historic home run milestone: Barry Bonds passed Babe Ruth for second place on the career homers list. I probably should have examined this topic after the 2007 season, but I was distracted by the otherworldly fantasy season put up by his fellow steroid-using Leo Alex Rodriguez. This week, we’ll look at something a little more tangible: home run totals.
2006 Astrology Awards Recap
One year before finishing second to Pisces in a virtual dead heat for the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League point title in 2007, the Taurus Bulls earned the top spot by a fairly healthy margin in 2006, marking the last time an Earth sign scored the most points in the league.
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.