Aries 2013-2018 Retrospective

Looking at the final tally of fantasy points from the 2018 Fantasy Astrology Baseball League season, we would see a playoff bracket that looks something like this: Aries (Fire) against Libra (Air) in the semifinals of the Positive Polarity, and then Pisces (Water) vs. Virgo (Earth) in the Negative Polarity It’s especially interesting looking at the top seed in the league, since 2018 marks the end of a stretch where the Aries Rams were on the top of the FABL totem pole for five out of six years - and even in the one year they didn’t finish first, they trailed the leader (Libra) by less than 200 points overall.

I don’t know what cosmic forces were at play to give Aries so many great players during this stretch, but I am prepared to track these players through the years in graphical form. I put together the following charts, modeled after a feature on my favorite baseball website, baseball-reference.com, where you can see the season-to-season lineup changes for any given franchise. What follows are four excerpts from the Aries list (infield, outfield/DH, starting pitchers, and relief pitchers) to better visualize the players who led the sign that led all of Fantasy Astrology Baseball from 2013 to 2018.

Starting at the top, at least where the positional numbers are concerned, we see that Aries enjoyed the production of arguably the game’s top catcher during this time period, Buster Posey. Even though our sample starts the year after Posey took home the 2012 NL MVP award, anyone who plays fantasy sports knows how valuable it is to get even average offensive numbers out of a position that is so often a complete write-off. Someone who has always put up significantly better than average numbers is third baseman Nolan Arenado. The Cardinals’ new third baseman took over at the hot corner from the venerable Adrian Beltre when the latter started to slow down due to age and injuries. Beltre actually continued as the DH for two years after Arenado’s debut – his name is underlined in 2014 to indicate that he shows up in a different column later somewhere else in the chart.

Another changing of the guard happened at first base, where Carlos Santana took the mantle from Miguel Cabrera, after briefly filling in at catcher for Posey during his down 2013 season. Speaking of 2013, the reason you see an asterisk next to Cabrera’s name during that year is because he actually played third base for the Tigers in deference to Taurus slugger Prince Fielder (and won his second consecutive AL MVP Award, to boot). But since this I go by capability rather than eligibility for this astrology project, I have no issue with shifting Miggy across the diamond to the primary position he’s played throughout his career. The only other positional shenanigans I had to pull was to put Starlin Castro at shortstop in 2016, when he only played three games with his new team, the Yankees. However that shift directly follows a six-year stretch where he played at least 109 games per season at short for the Cubs, and considering their next best option there was Adeiny Hechavarria (888 fantasy points), the defensive dropoff is probably worth it.

The top Aries outfielder during this stretch in question was Jay Bruce, who held down a corner spot for five out of six years. Otherwise, defense rules the day, as the majority of the non-Bruce outfield spots were taken up by center fielders, and good ones at that. Lorenzo Cain adds the most offense to his world-beating glovework, but Dexter Fowler and Jackie Bradley Jr. had some solid offensive seasons of their own. The exception is Hunter Pence, an obvious bat first option, despite his 95 games in center during his rookie year in 2007. It’s interesting to note that the Designated Hitter spot for this period contains only infielders; I don’t know if there’s some correlation between the precepts of the typical Aries personality and the lack of outfield depth, but there could be something worth examining there.

The only player who appeared in the Aries lineup all six years of this sample is lefty starter Chris Sale. The lanky lefty has never taken home a Cy Young Award in his career, despite impressively breaking the 2,100 point barrier in all six of the seasons in question here. Someone who got a lot more love from AL Cy voters is Corey Kluber, who won the award in both 2014 and 2017. Funny thing, he was actually outscored in the second year by Felix Hernandez, who hit the elusive 3,000-point milestone that year.

King Felix is the leader of an impressively international group in the Aries rotation. Hernandez, Carlos Carrasco, and Eduardo Rodriguez are all from Venezuela. Hisashi Iwakuma and Kenta Maeda are both Japanese. And if you look forward a couple of years, we have Korean lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu in the mix as well. Looking ahead, the international trend continues in the bullpen: Edwin Diaz is from Puerto Rico, Koji Uehara adds a third Japanese name to the mix, and while Dellin Betances was born in New York, he has Dominican heritage, as evidenced by the fact that he pitched for the Dominican Republic team in the 2017 World Baseball Classic.

All things astrology follow cycles, just like the zodiac wheel itself. And Aries appears to be cycling out of excellence: the sign dropped to 5th place in 2019, and then fell all the way to 8th in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. As things return to somewhat close to normalcy this coming season (collective bargaining agreement-willing), we will see if this decline continues for the first sign on the karmic wheel, or if they’ll somehow manage to claw their way back to the top.