2014 Astrology Awards Recap
View the 2014 FABL Lineups Here!
We’re now at year six (counting full seasons only) of our Fantasy Astrology Baseball League retrospective. I don’t know if I’m going to keep posting images of this graph for every season – after the first five years, I considered just putting up a new one only at five-year increments. But since I already went through the trouble of updating it, here’s what the FABL landscape looks like from 2014 thru 2019:
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. Capricorn (and Virgo, the next-best negative team in ’14) would both trend way up in the next two years, but it’s no secret which league was superior in 2014.
Now for the awards, which will again start with pitchers, who comprised the top five fantasy point scorers in baseball in 2014. Tops overall we have Aquarius ace Johnny Cueto (3,066 / 90.2), who takes home the Positive Polarity’s Cy Young Award. The ace of the real-life Reds won 20 games, and led the league in both innings pitched and strikeouts, thanks to his devastating fastball/changeup combo (leading the league in OPS-against for at-bats ending with those two offerings, according to the back of his 2015 Topps card). Honorable mention goes to Mariners ace Felix Hernandez (3,004 / 88.4) although it was his Aries teammate Corey Kluber (2,817 / 88.4) who took home the real life American League Cy Young Award while pitching for the Indians. Over in the Negative Polarity, Clayton Kershaw (3,037 / 112.5) won the real life NL MVP award, as well as the CYA, the FABL version of which he also takes home.
A 3,000-point season on a last place team is kind of like the mule with a spinnin’ wheel…
I throw around the term “consensus best player in baseball” quite liberally when describing Leo center fielder Mike Trout (2,606 / 16.6), whose Positive Polarity MVP mirrors his real life American League version of the award. And I know that there is more to greatness in this game than offensive production measured by counting stats. But this was the only time in the last six years that Trout led the league in fantasy points. If you’re dead set on giving the Negative Polarity MVP award to a position player (rather than Cueto, Kershaw, or even Adam Wainwright (2,637 / 82.4)), it would be Michael Brantley (2,414 / 15.5), who added to his value by qualifying for center field for Cleveland. It’s also worth mentioning that his Taurus teammate (and future real life Astros teammate) Jose Altuve (2,350 / 14.9) is right on his heels.
Remember back with this past year’s MVP award winner was a rookie? It was 2014, a year when Jose Abreu (2,217 / 15.3) won the real life AL Rookie of the Year award (as well as a Silver Slugger nod) to go with his PP RoY showing - although the designation is a little wonky for someone who already had a ten-year career in Cuba. Before we get to the top NP first year player, we have a pair of Gemini rookies worth mentioning: Collin McHugh (1,726 / 69.0) who was acquired from the Mets by the Astros in the preceding offseason, and Yordano Ventura (1,657 / 53.5), just three years before his tragic death in a car crash. However, it was yet another Gemini hurler, Jacob deGrom (1,497 / 68.0), who won the real life NL RoY as a precursor to his back-to-back Cy Young Awards. Anyway, the top fantasy scoring Negative League rookie is Masahiro Tanaka (1,643 / 82.2), who was in a similar situation to Abreu, in that Tanaka also starred for seven years in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league before coming to the states.
Tanaka just recently decided to return to Japan for 2021, after seven strong seasons for the Yankees.
In the last post, I officially rebranded the “Rolaids Reliever” award as “Reliable Reliever” (after a brief flirtation with “Closer of the Year”) so I could keep the same abbreviation. Note that this situation is fluid, and I’m open to suggestions in the comments section. It’s a curious piece of trivia that both RR award winners had the exact same fantasy point totals in 2014: Craig Kimbrel of Gemini (also Atlanta) and Greg Holland (Scorpio / Kansas City) each totaled 2,185 points. Holland ended up pitching in two more games (65 to 63), so his points-per-game average is slightly lower (33.6 to 34.7), but it’s nevertheless fascinating to see these two so evenly matched. What’s more is that both of these pitchers took home the reliever of the year awards for their respective real-life leagues, in the second year since they were named after Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman.
Kimbrel’s Topps card from the previous year had a sweet shot of his pre-pitch “claw” pose.
Sticking with the theme I established in my 2015 five-year retrospective, I’m going to continue looking at the big picture and examine the Ruling Planets of all 12 signs.