Thoughts About Baseball 2012 Schedule

Pop quiz, astrology buff: If your birthday falls on Opening Day of the baseball season, what's your astrological sign?  Give up?  It's Aries, the Ram, which is coincidentally (or not) also the first astrological sign of the Zodiac.  That means that roughly half the MLB players on the "Aries Rams" Fantasy Roster (so to speak) should have celebrated their birthday since the start of the season.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could analyze their statistical performances to compare with last year's to determine their fantasy value? Well, we can, but more on that later.

Last night, I watched MLB Network's broadcast of the Sox Rivalry: the Red variety from Boston roundly trounced the White variety from the south side of Chicago 10-3.  This game is notable because it features Phil Humber (whose name everyone will soon know to pronounce with a silent "H") in his first start after pitching a no-hitter last week.  It's also notable because this game happened concurrently to the Red Sox' announcement that Carl Crawford has a sprained ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow and will be shut down for at least 3 months.

This is bad news for the Red Sox, who recently tried to bolster their outfield with a trade for struggling Cubs CF Marlon Byrd.  Less practically, it's bad news for fantasy owners who were counting on 2012's 59th ranked player for a bounceback year.  And altogether fantastically, it's bad news for the purely theoretical Leo Lions, for whom Crawford represents the third-highest ranked player on the team (behind Crawford's teammate Dustin Pedroia and their Yankee rival Alex Rodriguez).

The only reason I'm paying such close attention to this game is, quite frankly, that it was on TV.  While this might seem an arbitrary reason to care about a particular matchup on a particular day, I had the idea that using the tried and tested method of following the broadcast schedule might be a good way to further narrow down the scope of this blog, since it's naive to think an amateur enthusiast such as myself could adequately cover the enitrety of the sport I love so well.

I say "further" narrow the scope, because I've recently performed some soul-searching and determined that of all 30 major league teams, I'm only really personally connected (through friends and relatives and whatnot) to about half of them.  And it's to those 15 teams I will limit my in-depth analysis, of which a correspondingly in-depth post will occur roughly once weekly.  To those 15 - the identities of which will be revealed during their special week - add another 6, representing the astrological signs that celebrate their birthdays during the baseball season (or post-season), and I've got myself a nice little schedule to keep myself occupied through the rest of the season.

This week's team will be the aforementioned Aries Rams, who have their very own fantasy baseball team this year.  Actually, this "week" (week ending 4/28) is retroactive to the week we're currently in, which encompasses the week after Aries transitioned into Taurus.  Expect this post sometime over the weekend.

Next week's team was selected in conjunction with some programming (television and cultural) that is taking place at the end of this week.  For those of you not up on your snacking news, Wednesday 4/26 was National Pretzel Day!  For those of you who can't see which team this is pointing to, tonight's episode of Undercover Boss (CBS, 8pm) features the CEO of Philly Pretzel Factory going undercover in his regional snack shop.  Then on Saturday 4/28, MLB Network is broadcasting a game featuring (you guessed it) the Philadelphia Phillies!

So that's what's coming up next week, for those of who could care less about the fantasy baseball ramifications of different players' astrological signs.  But if you want to follow me down the rabbit hole of the stars, stay tuned for my next post!