2011 Astrology Awards Recap
View the 2011 FABL Lineups Here!
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. The left-most column of the below graph shows what the FABL landscape would have looked like in Year Zero of my project, after which I’ll jump right into individual awards.
After a brief respite from pitchers being the top fantasy scorers in the league (Miguel Cabrera’s triple crown winning 2012 broke the mold), we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming. The Negative Polarity Cy Young Award obviously goes to Pisces legend Justin Verlander (3,335 points / 98.1 points per game), who had the highest-scoring fantasy season of any year that I’ve profiled so far. Not only did he win the real life American League CYA in 2011, he also took home the MVP trophy. It’s also worth noting that his sign-mate Clayton Kershaw (3,069 / 93.0) joined him in the 3,000-point club, with a National League Cy Young season of his own.
For the Positive Polarity CYA, Libra ace Jered Weaver (2,729 / 82.7) took home the crown, in a season where he was the starting pitcher for the real-life AL in the All-Star Game. Speaking of Libras, I’m giving the PP MVP award to center fielder Matt Kemp (2,971 / 18.5), who I think should have won the real-life NL version of the award over Scorpio Ryan Braun (2,785 / 18.6), even before the revelations came out that the latter was under the influence of performance enhancing drugs. The NP MVP goes to another center fielder, Virgo Jacoby Ellsbury (2,865 / 18.1), who obviously lost the real-life version of the AL award to Verlander.
2011 marked the rookie year of a legendary closer in the making, as Craig Kimbrel (2,411 / 30.5) made his debut for the Atlanta Braves / Gemini Twins, earning 46 saves along the way. He’s the obvious choice for both the Rookie of the Year and Reliable Reliever for the Positive Polarity. However, it seems like a waste to consolidate those two awards, especially considering Kimbrel would remain at the top of the PP relief pitching leaderboards through 2014. I’m not saying Kimbrel does not deserve both honors, but for the record, the next best fantasy reliever is John Axford (2,193 / 29.6), who also saved 46 games for Aries.
Similarly, after Kimbrel, the next best fantasy rookie is Jeremy Hellickson (1,716 / 59.2), also for Aries. But not long after him, we have a choice between two Negative Polarity rookie first basemen who were within two (2!) fantasy points of each other: Scorpio Eric Hosmer (1,670 / 13.0) and Capricorn Mark Trumbo (1,668 / 11.2). This is a tough choice: Hosmer had a slightly better per-game average, but again, that just means he played in fewer games. Also Trumbo had a handful of games in right field (more than 10, less than 20), so he has increased versatility. Looking ahead, we know that Hosmer had a more productive career (certainly more lucrative), but we shouldn’t use the benefit of foresight in determining these awards. What the heck, why not have them share it?
And to round things out, the award for best relief pitcher in the NP goes to Pisces J.J. Putz (2,028 / 33.8), in his first year after being acquired by the real-life Arizona Diamondbacks. Despite Putz’s career high total of 45 saves, you don’t get to his impressive point total until you get two more PP closers: Leo Drew Storen (2,162 / 29.6), who checked in with 43 saves, and yet another Aries Jose Valverde (2,152 / 28.7), who saved 49.
Next time, I’ll zoom out to the big picture and look at how the top players in baseball history stack up from a Fantasy Astrology perspective.