All-Time Since 1980

UPDATE: My division-by-division breakdowns are available here!

Water Division (Scorpio, Cancer, Pisces)

Fire Division (Sagittarius, Leo, Aries)

Earth Division (Virgo, Capricorn, Taurus)

Air Division (Libra, Gemini, Aquarius)

I recently completed yearly recaps for every Fantasy Astrology season since 1980, closing the books on yet another decade. As I do with every such milestone, I have updated my All-Time Career Fantasy Points database, adding 537 players to the mix. If you’ll recall from my previous two entries in this feature – All-Time since 2000 and All-Time since 1990 – players becomes eligible for the database if they make their sign’s starting lineup (or rotation, or bullpen) during any year in the decade in question. So while many of the new additions may have played into the 90’s, they weren’t fantasy astrology relevant since the 80’s.

Before diving into those new additions, however, I’m using this post as a hub for the upcoming division-by-division recaps, and also for some big picture concepts. And what picture is bigger than which sign performed the best? For the second straight year, Scorpio came out on top, as their players have scored 2,557,872 total career fantasy points. Next, and the top Positive sign, Sagittarius had 218 players total 2,442,481 points. The Stingers were also the best on a per-player basis, as their 221 players in the database averaged roughly 11,574 points per season. This is a more than 300-PPS advantage over second place Virgo, who had only 216 players, for an average of 11,260 per season.

The number of database-worthy players on each of these three teams is below the average of 224.8… or let’s just say 225. But remember, having more players doesn’t necessary equate to having more points, since fewer players means more year-over-year stability. To prove this point, consider last-place Aquarius: they were the only sign not to reach the two million point threshold, but they had a league-leading 247 players included on the database. This finding could be extrapolated into a fantasy maxim: it’s always better to have a regular than to stream players week to week.

While sign-wide excellence is perhaps the biggest PICTURE idea, the biggest NUMBER from the database has to be the total amount of points scored by all players on the database. That number is a staggering 27,579,590… or maybe it’s not that staggering, at least considering the budgets of today’s teams. I mean, Max Scherzer will be making more dollars per year than fantasy points scored by ALL PLAYERS since 1980. But I guess fantasy points are relative anyway. Another big-but-not-nearly-as-big number is the total number of players on the database: 2,698.

But even though these numbers are bigger, they might help us make sense of sign-by-sign performance by using smaller numbers: percentages! The order is the same, but instead of talking about the somewhat nebulous idea of fantasy points, we can talk about each sign’s share of the total points scored. Looked at this way, Scorpio is the only team to eclipse nine per-cent of all fantasy points, with an exact mark of 9.27%. On the other side of the coin, Aquarius is the only sign who failed to reach seven per-cent of the point total, with 6.82%. Only two teams (Pisces and Gemini) were in the “seven per-cent solution,” with the other eight teams in the eight per-cent range.

Looking at each sign’s share of total players, we see another mirror between Scorpio and Aquarius: the Water Bearers are the only sign with nine per-cent of the total players: 9.15%. However, it’s another Water sign that has the ignominious title of having the fewest players: my home sign Cancer Crabs, with 7.93%, the only sign with less than an eight per-cent share. Actually, didn’t I just say that it’s better to have fewer players, since that means more consistency? I still wish there were more Decapods representing. Either way, Cancer’s 214 players were a lot closer to the mean than Aquarius’s 247, so at least there’s that?

Enough preamble. Next time I’ll dive into division-by-division breakdowns, starting with the division of the highest scoring sign, Negative Water!