2016 Astrology Awards Recap
View the 2016 FABL Lineups Here!
2016 will hold a place in American history as the year in which one curse was broken, immediately before another was placed on the land. The first curse I’m referring to is the Curse of the Billy Goat, which ended on November 2, 2016 when the Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series after a 108-year drought. The second is the curse of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, which began six days later on a truly traumatizing Election Day. I may very well have lost some readers by making this political comment, but if there are any Trump supporters who are also into Astrology and Baseball, they’ll have to find their analysis elsewhere.
Anyway, let’s get back to the 2016 Fantasy Astrology Baseball season by looking at the fourth installment of my year-by-year graph, showing the progression of each sign’s fantasy point totals through the years.
There are two things to notice at the very top of the chart. One is that 2016 featured the league leader with the highest point total of the previous four years: Aries was right in the middle of their run of dominance, pacing the league with 33,697 points. But the second thing to notice is that the top two signs finished LITERALLY neck and neck to end the year: Libra finished with 33,401 points in total, a difference of less than 300 points. There were some positional shenanigans on both sides to maximize their point totals, but suffice it to say, the Positive Polarity semifinal matchup between those two teams would be one of the most evenly-matched in FABL history.
Jason Kipnis played some center field in 2017 and 2018, it’s not totally unfounded, okay?
On the Negative Polarity side, Capricorn leads the way with 32,344 points, a high water mark that would precede a precipitous drop the following season from which they have not yet recovered. Interestingly enough, the Capricorn GOATS led their polarity in points on the same year that the Curse of the Billy GOAT was broken… coincidence? We’ll get into that later. Rounding out the semifinal picture, since both Capricorn and the fourth-place Virgo are in the Earth Division, the Cancer Crabs would jump into the playoffs, despite falling short of 30,000 total points on the year.
Bumgarner’s point total is underlined because it was slightly different than the first time I put together these lists.
Now for the awards! Starting with the Positive Polarity, Leo starter Max Scherzer (2,917 points / 85.8 points per game) takes home the FABL Cy Young Award for the second time in three years. (He also won back-to-back National League CYA’s in real life.) I’m actually surprised that Leo didn’t finish higher in the overall standings, since they have the top two scoring pitchers in all of fantasy baseball: Mad Max and Mad Bum (i.e. Madison Bumgarner, with his 2,613 points and 76.9 PPG average). The Lions also sport the runner-up for the PP MVP award in Mike Trout (2,725 / 17.1), who won the AL MVP in real life, but finishes second to Libra right fielder Mookie Betts (2,819 / 17.8) in the fantasy points-based scoring system that I use.
The highest-scoring player in the Negative Polarity is Taurus second baseman Jose Altuve (2,656 / 16.5), who would go on to win the real-life AL MVP the following season. It kind of makes you wonder why he had to participate in the sign-stealing scandal if he was that good to begin with… or I guess it could make you wonder if the sign-stealing scandal was going on earlier than 2017. His future Astros teammate Justin Verlander (2,612 / 76.8) paced the NP pitchers while serving as the Pisces ace. Just a few points behind him is Rick Porcello of Capricorn (2,607 / 79.0) who took home the real life AL CYA, probably thanks largely to his league-leading wins total.
All four players in the outfield/DH rotation played center at some point in their careers, so it’s not much of a stretch.
The Rookies of the Year in both FABL Polarities (and the PP Rolaids Reliever of the year) play for the Dodgers, which means only one of them could take home the NL RoY in real life. That honor went to Corey Seager (2,100 / 13.4), the Taurus shortstop who recently won both NLCS and World Series MVP in 2020. But not far behind him was Japanese pitcher Kenta Maeda (1,807 / 56.5), who was traded away from Los Angeles before their World Series win, but pitched like gangbusters while spending 2020 in Minnesota. It’s a bit of a stretch to call the Aries righty a rookie, given his 8-year career in Japan, but logic that didn’t stop Hideo Nomo from winning the award in 1995.
Jonathan Villar’s versatility means I don’t have to cheat the system by putting Brian Dozier at third base.
I don’t like continuing to use the branded Rolaids Reliever award, but Reliever of the Year has the same initials as Rookie of the Year. What if we picked something to do with Closer? Closer of the Year? Back in the day they called them “firemen,” but that’s too gender-specific for me. Either way, the Positive Polarity winner of this award is yet another Dodger, Kenley Jansen (2,442 / 34.4), who won the real-life NL’s RR honors. The Libran closer would defend his crown in 2017, before turning things over to a pair of Aries closers. Zack (then known as Zach) Britton (2,362 / 34.2) of the Orioles also took home both the FABL’s Negative Polarity CoY AND the American League’s Reliever of the Year. While the Capricorn didn’t defend his title next year, it did stay within the same sign.
In addition to Britton, the Capricorn rotation is well-stocked with lefties.
In the next post, I’ll look a little more in depth at the curse that came to an end in 2016, and some of the historical players who helped keep it going for 108 years.