All-2000’s: Pisces
If you believe the playoff odds provided by the ESPN fantasy baseball client (which I use to run the official Fantasy Astrology Baseball League), Pisces has a 99% chance to make the postseason this year. I know what you’re thinking: there’s still more than half of the season left to play, how can they be so certain? Well, given that the Fish have a 7-4 record and their two Water Division foes (Scorpio and Cancer) are sitting at 4-7, I’d say the outcome is fairly assured. But enough about 2021 – let’s shift our focus back to the Pisces All-2000’s roster.
The player with the most career fantasy points who started for Pisces any time in the 2000’s is Bobby Abreu, perhaps one of the most underrated hitters of his generation. Abreu leads an outfield crop that is not only overwhelmingly left-handed – Reds/Yankees legend Paul O’Neill, journeyman slugger Matt Stairs, and all three top center field options (Steve Finley, Curtis Granderson, and Denard Span) – but that is also fairly diverse, internationally speaking. Abreu was born in Venezuela, Raul Mondesi is from the Dominican Republic, and Stairs hails from Canada. Also, while Alex Rios’s birthplace is listed as Coffee, Alabama, he grew up in Puerto Rico, and also thrice represented Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic.
The numbers columns from left to right are: total career points, points-per-season, and points-per-game.
Speaking of Alex Rios, I’d like to take this time to recognize him as the cuspiest baseball player I’ve come across so far. If you open up the HelloAstrology.com zodiac calculator and plug in his birth date (February 18, 1981) and location (Coffee, AL doesn’t even show up, so you have to use Elba, the county seat of Coffee County), the result is Pisces by the slimmest of margins: 21 seconds, in the degrees-minutes-seconds terminology. However, if you change the location to Tallahassee, FL (the closest major city, just about 120 miles to the east), the result changes to Aquarius, by 29 degrees, 57 minutes, and 50 seconds. What’s more, Guaynabo, Puerto Rico (where Rios attended high school), is even further into Water Bearer territory: 29º 55’ 19”. The last conflicting piece of the puzzle is that both FamousBirthdays.com and the Baseball Almanac list his sign as Aquarius… but I have to trust my own research here and use the same method for everybody.
The dates columns from left to right are: first year in MLB, last year in MLB, and total years in MLB.
The top Pisces All-2000’s infielder is Jeff Kent, former MVP and longtime lineup protector of the overall top-scoring All-2000’s player Barry Bonds in San Francisco. Not far behind Kent is first baseman Paul Konerko, whose emergence for the White Sox in the early 2000’s is likely one of the main reasons why Frank Thomas has more career appearances at DH than 1B. Mike Lowell is the top Pisces with Puerto Rican heritage who was actually born in Puerto Rico – he finished his career with just a few hundred more fantasy points than fellow Puerto Rican catcher Benito Santiago. Jean Segura is the only active Pisces hitter who has played in 2021 (Chris Davis has spent the whole season on the 60-day injured list), and while he has primarily been a shortstop throughout his career, he’ll likely reach the requisite 20% career appearances to have second base listed as a secondary position sometime in 2021.
A player needs at 20% career appearances at a position for me to include it in the POS2 column.
Pisces boasts the top two active* pitchers in terms of career fantasy points: Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw. The asterisk above denotes that Verlander is currently on the mend from Tommy John surgery, but the 38-year-old has shown no intention of calling it quits just yet. Meanwhile, Kershaw’s 80.3 career points-per-game average through 2020 is the highest among any fantasy astrology starter in the last two decades – although as he advances into his 30’s, that number is sure to regress.
After these two aces and Georgia-born Kevin Brown, the Pisces pitching staff continues the international trend that we saw in their outfield. Johan Santana and Anibal Sanchez (who I have listed as active, even though he’s decided to sit out 2021 due to ongoing concerns about COVID-19) are both from Venezuela. Workhorse starter and top active reliever Aroldis Chapman are both from Cuba. Fernando Rodney (who had about 1,000 more fantasy points than Chapman through 2020) and swing-pitcher Miguel Batista both hail from the Dominican Republic. Yovani Gallardo was born in Mexico, and while Sergio Romo’s birthplace is Brawley, CA, he played for Mexico in the World Baseball Classic.
Next week, we’ll return to the 2021 season and profile the top new additions to each FABL roster as the calendar changes to July.