A blog analyzing Major League Baseball through the lens of Astrology
Welcome to Astrology Baseball! I arrange MLB players into teams based on their astrological signs, and then pit those teams against each other in mock fantasy seasons.
Now expanding into men’s and women’s basketball!
Taurus Tarot: The Hierophant
We’ve got about a week left of Taurus season 2021, which is a perfect time to analyze the connection between the Tarot and the second sign of the zodiac. According to the research I have on hand, the Tarot card associated with Taurus is The Hierophant. In the Baseball Tarot, this card becomes The Manager.
Astrology Sign Essences
When I first built the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League back in 2012, I separated the 12 teams into four divisions based on the classical elements: Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. This structure is fine when building a league from scratch, but it doesn’t work when trying to simulate a FABL season using the current six division layout of Major League Baseball. In order to make this organization work, you have to look not at the four Elements, but at the three Essences.
2003 Astrology Awards Recap
In 2003, the then-Florida Marlins became the first team to win the World Series twice while making the playoffs as a Wild Card team. Since then, we’ve gotten an additional Wild Card entry per league, which also led to the scheduled one-game playoff. As goofy as that concept is, it doesn’t hold a candle to starting extra innings with a runner on second base.
FABL Waiver Wire Pickups
Setting boundaries for myself is the main reason that I only add players to teams via the waiver wire once a month. And with the calendar recently having changed over from April to May, here are some of the top fantasy players that I left on the bench to start the 2021 FABL season.
MVP Baseball 2005 Leaders
When it first came out for the PS2, I thought MVP Baseball 2005 was going to be one in a long line of yearly installments. I thought EA Sports would maintain their license from MLB, and we’d continue to enjoy this franchise for the foreseeable future. But oh, how wrong I was.
2004 Astrology Awards Recap
I was a college freshman during the 2004 playoffs, and I can remember no better moment of baseball camaraderie than watching the curse-breaking Red Sox in the lounge with a bunch of new friends. And if that wasn’t magical enough, we then got to retire to our dorm rooms and play MVP Baseball 2005 on our PS2’s.
MLB The Show 21 Default Rosters
I have logged several hours on MLB The Show 21, but none actually simulating an actual MLB game. Instead, I’ve been meticulously combing through the default rosters for each franchise and plugging each player’s rating and attributes into my 2021 MLB database. Nobody ever said being an astrology baseball blogger was supposed to be exciting.
2005 Astrology Awards Recap
Two important things started in the 2005 season: the tenure of the Washington Nationals franchise playing in the nation’s capitol, and suspensions under MLB’s new drug policy. While there were no Leos suspended this time around, I would venture to say that the Lions make up the majority of high profile PED cases, including numbers 1 and 4 on the all-time home run list.
Taurus Season Injury Report
Now that the zodiacal wheel has turned into Taurus season, I’d like to use this moment of transition to detail some of the players who have transitioned in or out of their team’s lineup over the first two weeks of the season. I’ll focus primarily on injuries, but I won’t ignore any particularly eye-popping hot streaks that could elevate a player from bench role to starter over the long haul.
Home Run Leaders by Sign
In 2006, one of baseball’s most famous steroid users reached a historic home run milestone: Barry Bonds passed Babe Ruth for second place on the career homers list. I probably should have examined this topic after the 2007 season, but I was distracted by the otherworldly fantasy season put up by his fellow steroid-using Leo Alex Rodriguez. This week, we’ll look at something a little more tangible: home run totals.
2006 Astrology Awards Recap
One year before finishing second to Pisces in a virtual dead heat for the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League point title in 2007, the Taurus Bulls earned the top spot by a fairly healthy margin in 2006, marking the last time an Earth sign scored the most points in the league.
Aries Tarot: The Emperor
For a brief time, around the turn of the last decade (counting from 0-9, of course), I developed an interest in the Tarot. The card associated with Aries (the current sign) is The Emperor. The Baseball Tarot’s version of this card is The Legend, which represents “ Authority – Ambition – An Ideal in Material Form.”
Top Fantasy Point Scorers 2007-19
I know deep down that fantasy points are a far-from perfect method to determining the usefulness of MLB players. But there is something appealing about boiling down a player’s performance into one clean number. And if you prefer Wins Above Replacement, I compared the top fantasy point scores in the league with the bWAR scores of those same players to see if there is a connection between the two.
2007 Astrology Awards Recap
Baseball fans might remember the 2007 MLB season for the epic late-season collapse of the Mets, as the Phillies overcame a 7 game deficit with just over two weeks to go. It’s impossible to tell if the FABL had a similar down-to-the-wire divisional chase without doing hundreds of week-by-week calculations, but the two teams at the top (Pisces (33,564) and Taurus (33,523)) finished with point totals that were so incredibly close that it’s basically a tie.
2021 Earth Signs Preview
My preview of the 2021 Fantasy Astrology Baseball League season concludes today with the three Earth signs. For positional commentary (at least in the infield) I’ll be taking into account my new roster structure for the league, where shortstops are now officially allowed to play second base, and any infielder can slot in at first. Also, fantasy rankings will be up to date as of Opening Day.
Astrology Team Nicknames
Prior to the 2008 season, the Major League franchise in Tampa Bay changed their name from “Devil Rays” to simply “Rays.” This caused me to look back at the nicknames I’ve bestowed on the Fantasy Astrology Baseball teams and ask: Which, if any, could we consider changing? And what are some possible replacements?
2008 Astrology Awards Recap
This is showing my age, but the 2008 World Series was the first one that occurred after I graduated from college, so I got to watch the Philadelphia Phillies defeat the newly-christened Tampa Bay Rays on a hi-def TV from a sports bar stool, rather than whatever was in my dorm’s lounge. The biggest news about the 2008 FABL season is that the Sagittarius Archers scored the most overall fantasy points in the league.
2021 Fire Signs Preview
This post will primarily serve as a preview to the 2021 Fire Signs, including the sign that we’re currently in: Aries. But I want to lead with an announcement about the structure of the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League itself: I replaced the “2B” slot with a more inclusive “middle infielder,” and did away with “1B” in favor of a general “IF.”
Real-Life All-Decade Awards Winners
A big part of this project has been determining which players would have won the major league-wide awards in each hypothetical season of the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League. But recently I got to thinking about how the astrological signs are represented among players who have won the real-life versions of these awards. And with a decade of full FABL seasons now in the books, here are the signs of MLB’s major awards from 2010 to 2019.