1972 Aries Batting Orders
View the 1972 FABL Lineups Here!
The 1972 MLB season was the last before the American League adopted the designated hitter rule, allowing a position player to hit in place of the pitcher on a full-time basis. But since I’m going reverse-chronologically in my trip through Fantasy Astrology Baseball League history, 1972 is the first time I have encountered the Major Leagues without the DH. This presents me with a decision as to whether I want to continue utilizing the rule for my FABL lineups as I continue backwards. But given my previously-expressed feelings on the matter, it should come as no surprise that my decision was a resounding Yes.
Even though the league didn’t officially adopt the designated hitter until 1972, the concept was first discussed almost a century earlier. As far back as the 1880s, team owners suggested the so-called “tenth man rule,” allowing a multi-use pinch-hitter for the worst hitter on the diamond. Even back then, the futility of “twirlers” at the plate was recognized. But purists who thought the game should be a true “nine vs. nine” affair won out, and the idea was shelved. However, the other thing to consider is that fantasy lineups don’t have to mirror real-life. For example, the league I’m playing in allows for TWO DH slots, in addition to requiring just three outfielders of any type, rather than distinguishing between left field, center, and right.
So it wasn’t hard for me to justify keeping the DH as I build fantasy lineups for the astrological signs going back beyond 1972. But one consequence of the lack of a DH is that both leagues are now uniform when it comes to determining batting orders. I haven’t written about batting orders before, since I always organize my lineups by position in the Gallery section (see above). But I have an in-depth, color-coded system for approximating batting orders, which I will explain using 1972’s top-scoring team: the Aries Rams.
The numbers in front of each player’s name represent how many games that player started at the designated spot in the batting order for the season in question. The bold names show in which spot each player spent the majority of their season appearances. Bold and underlined names indicate the player had no more than 10 games started in any other spot. The fill colors show how each player ranks among their sign-mates in terms of fantasy points, with the order based on the color wheel. (The names with colored text rather than fill color are bonus players/alternates, and do not need to be considered for the starting lineup.)
For the top three scoring batters, I start with the primary colors – yellow, blue, and red – with yellow being first because that’s Microsoft Excel’s default color when you want to change the color of a cell. The next three in points order are represented by secondary colors, or the combinations of two primaries: green (yellow and blue), purple (blue and red), and orange (red and yellow). For the next three, I somewhat arbitrarily chose brown (a mish-mash of all colors), gray (the absence of color), and inverted (black background with white text color).
This system helps me determine which players to prioritize, to make sure that the best players are in optimal spots, regardless of real-life tendencies. For example, looking at the 1972 Rams, second-baseman-cheated-as-shortstop Ted Sizemore (1,007 / 8.4) spent the vast majority of his season batting second for the St. Louis Cardinals. But since Sizemore is the lowerst-scoring starter on the team, I decided to bump him to the bottom of the order in favor of Willie Davis (1,923 / 12.9), even though he spent only 21 games in the two spot, as opposed to 125 batting 3rd. Similarly, Reggie Smith (1,785 / 13.6) had a ratio of 114 games batting 4th to just 14 batting 3rd, but I put him at his secondary batting order spot in deference to overall points leader Nate Colbert (2,201 / 14.6), who bat exclusively in the cleanup spot (149 games). The same is true of runner-up Lee May (1,987 / 13.4), who wouldn’t even have made the starting lineup without the DH, since both he and Colbert exclusively qualified at first base in 1972.
Speaking of positional eligibility, going reverse-chronologically sometimes creates blind spots as far as precedents set in earlier seasons. For example, when I “first” encountered Pete Rose (1,976 / 12.8) in 1985, he was exclusively a first baseman. But given that Aries had better-scoring first base options (at the time, Glenn Davis, Ken Griffey Sr., and George Scott), and considering Rose had recently played third base (not since 1978, but still…), I decided to shift baseball’s all-time hits leader back across the diamond to maximize the Rams’ fantasy points. However, not until I went backwards to 1972 did I realize that Gold Glove first baseman George Scott (1,740 / 11.4) also had several seasons where he qualified at third base. Looking even further back, I discovered that Pete Rose began his career as a second baseman, before shifting to the outfield, and then settling in as a corner infielder.
If I had these two pieces of contextual information, I might have organized the Aries lineups differently during the years where both Rose and Scott made the starting lineups. From 1977 through 1973, if I cheated Rose at second base and put Scott at third, that would have allowed the likes of Lee May, Bob Watson, or Willie Montanez to line up at first base. That in turn would have opened up the DH slot for better-hitting alternatives than second base mainstay Rennie Stennett. Who knows how many fantasy points the Rams left on the table!?
…
OK, so I actually went back and did the math, and it doesn’t affect the standings at all. Aries won the Fire Division every year from 1978 through 1972, scoring the most points in the league for the last four of those years, reverse-chronologically speaking. So it turns out that all this speculation is a moot point. And so while it does bug me that I’m not getting the full picture in terms of point-maximization, that’s why I always include some alternates underneath each sign’s starting lineups.