2017 Astrology Awards Recap
View the 2017 FABL Lineups Here!
As we continue back in reverse chronological order of Fantasy Astrology Baseball League seasons, here’s the third installment of the graph plotting each team’s total fantasy points over time. As you marvel at my color-coded lines, let’s look at some three-year trends from the last three full years of Major League Baseball seasons.
Firstly, you can see that the top two signs, Aries and Virgo, were in the beginning stages of a three-year decline, in a pretty linear fashion. Conversely, Cancer and Pisces (and Sagittarius) were on a fairly linear upward trend. It’s also curious that Pisces basically mirrored the fantasy point totals of a different sign each of these three years: in ’17 they were right on par with Scorpio, in ’18 it was Virgo, and in ’19 we’ve already examined the cluster at the top with Cancer and Leo. At the bottom end of the spectrum, the two lowest-scoring signs, Aquarius and Taurus, each had a pronounced V shape, with each sign reaching their nadir in 2018.
Now on to the individual FABL awards for 2017, which I award based on fantasy point totals, regardless of their sign’s performance or particular statistics. Following that logic, the Positive Polarity Cy Young Award goes to Corey Kluber (2,935 points / 101.2 points-per-game), who not only led all of baseball in fantasy points in 2017, but also won the real life American League CYA. The back of Kluber’s 2018 Topps card mentions his red-hot September (5-0 record, 0.84 ERA, 50 strikeouts), which is especially interesting from a fantasy perspective, since September is normally the month where fantasy playoffs occur. In the Negative Polarity, Clayton Kershaw (2,431 / 90.0) takes home the honors, even though he was behind two other Positive competitors: Kluber’s Aries teammate Chris Sale (2,799 / 87.5) and real-life NL Cy Young Award winner, Leo Max Scherzer (2,739 / 88.4).
Going strictly by fantasy points, the Negative Polarity MVP would go to Cancer centerfielder Charlie Blackmon (2,859 / 18.0), who won the NL Batting Title while leading the league in hits and finishing tied for third in home runs. He lost the real-life NL MVP to Scorpio Giancarlo Stanton (2,833 / 17.8) who led the NL in home runs by a wide margin, a feat he accomplished without playing his home games at Coors Field. Sticking with the NP, the next player in terms of offensive points is real-life AL Rookie of the Year winner Aaron Judge (2,765 / 17.8), and it makes perfect sense for him to capture the FABL’s Negative Polarity version of that same award. It may even have made sense for him to win the real-life AL MVP award as well, but we’ll get into that later.
Switching back to the Positive Polarity, MVP honors would go to Nolan Arenado (2,606 / 16.4), although I suppose I could have bestowed the award on any of the three PP pitchers who outscored him. The Aries third baseman might have also benefitted from the Coors effect, but playing at high altitude doesn’t have any effect on his stellar defense. As far as Positive Rookie of the Year, not only did the next two top-scoring rookies after Judge both play for Negative Polarity teams, they are both Cancerians: Cody Bellinger (2,094 / 15.9) and Andrew Benintendi (1,940 / 12.8). You have to go down almost 90 spots to find the top Positive rookie, Leo first baseman Josh Bell (1,777 / 11.2). Gemini first baseman Yuli Gurriel (1,658 / 11.9) is the runner up, although he can hardly be classified as a rookie, since he had a long and storied career in Cuba.
In the relief pitching realm, Libran Kenley Jansen (2,377 / 36.6) led the way in a season where he recorded his 200th career save, including a stretch where he saved 24 games in a row. The 2017 Positive Polarity was chock full of star closers, as Jansen beat out Craig Kimbrel (2,268 / 33.9) on Gemini and Corey Knebel (2,068 / 27.2) on Sagittarius for the top honors. On the other end of the spectrum, the Negative Polarity didn’t have a single 2,000+ point reliever in 2018, with the top option Capricorn stopper Alex Colome (1,959 / 30.1).
It’s impossible for a fantasy team to put together a cheating scheme, since the players don’t actually take the field together – their real-life stats are simply transferred to the particular fantasy team in question. But that’s unfortunately not the case for 2017’s actual World Series winners, the Astros, who gained an advantage from their now-infamous “sign stealing scandal” to defeat the Dodgers in an incredibly close 7-game contest. Next time, we’ll take a look at which fantasy astrology signs benefitted most from Houston’s misdeeds.