Astrology Baseball Classic
UPDATE: Since I found myself linking to this post from all my In-Depth Looks at the 2021 signs, I’ve decided to make this a hub for all my analysis so far. Watch this space for new links!
EARTH DIVISION
AIR DIVISION
WATER DIVISION
FIRE DIVISION
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It’s the end of another baseball season. Your fantasy leagues have long been decided, the World Series Champion has been crowned, and you’re preparing yourself for a long and arduous offseason... But wait! Someone has just proposed a new event to warm the winter months: the Astrology Baseball Classic! It’s similar to the World Baseball Classic, but instead of using countries of origin, the teams will be determined by astrological signs (i.e. birth date and location). It’s a modest proposal at first: we’ll invite players from the top signs of each elemental group (Fire, Earth, Air, and Water), and have them play against each other in a tournament-style bracket.
That sounds like a great idea! you might respond, before asking: But how do you determine which signs will participate? The answer: by using fantasy points, of course! I’ll calculate point totals for each player on each sign, and then determine seeding based on whichever signs have the highest scores among all players.
Couldn’t that be a bit unbalanced? might be your next question. Won’t the signs with more players have an advantage over the signs with fewer? Well, you could say the same thing about countries in the World Baseball Classic – there’s a lot more MLB talent from the Dominican Republic than Panama, for example. But then again, they don’t use a point-based seeding system. So to make sure it’s an equal comparison, I’ll just use point totals from each sign’s top “starting lineups” (including pitching rotations and bullpens).
If you want to see how I determine the batting portion of those lineups, here’s a video I put together of the beginning of that process:
As you can see, this takes a great deal of time and effort to complete, but it is my favorite baseball/database related activity of all the various ones I’ve come up with over my 20 years as a diehard fan. Part of the reason why I enjoy it so much is that I allow myself a lot of leeway as far as positional eligibility is concerned. For example, Virgo is the only 2021 sign whose starting lineup reached 30,000 points. However, they only got there because I was willing to cheat Max Muncy as a left fielder, when in fact he only qualified at first and second base. Here’s the breakdown of all 12 signs for 2021:
Based on my calculations, the bracket would have Virgo taking on Pisces in the Negative Polarity (Capricorn finished second in overall points, but we can’t have two Earth signs in the final four), and Libra facing off against Leo in the Positive Polarity. In case you’re wondering if my positional eligibility shenanigans would have altered the bracket, worry not. I recalculated each sign’s 2021 point total using only qualified players at each position, and while the overall rankings did shift a bit, the top four playoff-qualifying teams don’t change.
For the extra curious, here’s a breakdown of the changes after the top three signs, all of which remain the same. Leo, one of only two signs (along with Gemini) to have a batting lineup completely in compliance with qualification rules, jumps from 7th to 4th. This drops Pisces behind the much-maligned Aquarius, which is still far behind Libra in the Air Division. Cancer had the biggest loss in points when replacing all their out-of-position players, but finishes behind Pisces in either configuration. This is especially notable, considering that Cancer had the most total points when considering ALL 2021 players, rather than just the starting lineups. But that’s why it’s important to take this extra step, since you can’t just populate an entire lineup with DH’s.
I’ve added all the starting lineups for each sign to the Gallery section, as usual. But starting next week, I will begin my deep dive into each sign. My plan is to go position by position, focusing on depth, and pointing out some high quality players that might have been overlooked when taking only full-season fantasy points into consideration.