Legends of MLB The Show 2022

The first time I saw a baseball video game include a group of famous retired players was All-Star Baseball 2001 for the Nintendo 64. That game’s Cooperstown Legends had a lineup made up of stars from across the ages, including Reggie Jackson batting cleanup and Nolan Ryan as the ace pitcher. MLB The Show 2022 has continued this tradition, with not one, but THREE different historical lineups, plus a plethora of “legendary” players available in the free agent pool.

According to my count, there are 212 total legendary entries, although the actual total is much lower, considering roughly 30 players show up twice. Some quick math will reveal that there are not nearly enough such legendary players to fill out an astrology lineup for all 12 signs, but we can at least explore some trends. Below is a chart showing how many legendary players from each sign show up in the game’s database.

Virgo has the most total unique players, with 22 – plus three duplicate players who appear on both a legendary roster and as a legendary free agent. Scorpio and Libra are in a tie for second place, with 19 unique players each, but SCO also has three duplicates, while LIB has none. Actually, there is one extremely cuspy Libra worth mentioning: Philadelphia Athletics slugging first baseman Jimmie Foxx was born on October 22, 1907, just one day before the sun traditionally moves to Scorpio. I wasn’t able to verify his sign, since the HelloAstrology.com Zodiac Calculator only goes back to 1920. His baseball almanac entry lists Foxx as a Libra, but I’ve seen that site conflict with my preferred method before (cf. Ian Kinsler).

My favorite part about these legendary players is that the game lists their ages in their player cards, which means you can calculate fantasy points for the precise seasons that each player was modeled after. Not surprisingly, the top five highest scoring players are pitchers from the “Mid-Century Groundbreakers” team, since pitchers were utilized in a categorically different way back in the game’s early days. For example, in his platform 1908 season, Leo Christy Mathewson started 44 out of 56 games for the New York Giants, going the distance in 34 of them, including 11 shutouts. All four of those figures led the National League, as did his 1.43 ERA, 37 wins, and 390.2 innings – good for a 5,497 fantasy point season!

You have to get creative imagining Christy Mathewson wearing an orange Leo uniform in the days of black-and-white photography.

While Virgo had the most total players, Scorpio came in first in terms of total points for the seasons represented. (I’m including duplicates for these calculations, since I didn’t want to have to choose between two all-world seasons.) This is thanks to Scorpio having the #2 and #4 top-scoring players: 1913 MVP winner Walter Johnson (5,164 points / 107.6 points-per-game) and 1968 MVP, Cy Young Award, and Gold Glover Bob Gibson (4,219 / 124.1). And in between those two pitchers is Cy Young himself: in 1901, his first season with the Boston Americans, he scored 4,409 points, with an average of 102.5 per game.

The top batter in the legendary player pool is Babe Ruth’s 1921 season, where he swatted 59 home runs (breaking his own record of 54 from the previous year) en route to a 4,133 point, 27.2 PPG fantasy season. The top player not on the MCG squad is Vida Blue, the ace of the “Expansion Era Boomers,” who led the league with a 1.82 ERA, while going 24-8 with 301 strikeouts in 1971. Actually, I played a little fast and loose with that one: the game lists Blue’s age as 22, which should correspond with his 1972 season. But considering he won the MVP and CYA in ’71, with 4,068 points and 104.3 points-per-game, compared to just 1,333 and 53.3 in ’72, there’s no question which season best represents a player with a 99 overall rating. For reference, the top player on the “Long Ball Beasts” is Larry Walker from 1997, where he took home the NL MVP, Gold Glove, and Silver Slugger with a 3,484 / 22.8 fantasy season.

I likely won’t be playing too many games against these legendary teams, since I’m still occupied with building my 2022 Fantasy Astrology lineups. But maybe I’ll use this as a jumping off point to look further back into baseball’s history than my reverse-chronological journey has reached so far,