The 2008 season started with the Red Sox as champs. They were beaten by the A's, who were beaten back by Boston, who were then swept by Toronto, who lost to Oakland, who lost to Cleveland, and so on, until we reached our current champion.
The Heavyweight of the Year is the team that wins the most title bouts at the end of the season.
2008 Title Bout Records:
| Mets | 23 | 17 |
| Athletics | 13 | 13 |
| Red Sox | 11 | 7 |
| Cubs | 9 | 1 |
| Padres | 8 | 6 |
| Rockies | 7 | 14 |
| Angels | 6 | 4 |
| Indians | 6 | 11 |
| Brewers | 5 | 0 |
| Cardinals | 5 | 5 |
| Reds | 5 | 5 |
| Dodgers | 5 | 7 |
| Marlins | 4 | 3 |
| Rangers | 4 | 6 |
| Blue Jays | 3 | 3 |
| Nationals | 3 | 5 |
| Mariners | 2 | 1 |
| Yankees | 2 | 3 |
| Phillies | 2 | 5 |
| Tigers | 1 | 2 |
| Giants | 0 | 3 |
| Orioles | 0 | 3 |
2006 Heavyweight of the Year:
Oakland Athletics
2005 Heavyweight of the Year:
Oakland Athletics
Ken: catfish AT zombia d.o.t. com
Ryan: rarmbrust AT gmail d.o.t. com
Philip: kingchimp AT alamedanet d.o.t net
2008 Stats
Baseball Toaster runs on some experimental software called Fairpole. It's still under development.
For more information, please visit the Fairpole blog, or read the FAQ.
Curt Schilling claims that some Tampa Bay players are questioning the rationality of their manager's beanball policies. In reply, Lou Piniella channels Brian "I am not an idiot" Sabean.
We won't admit hearsay as evidence into this trial, so we don't know whether Schilling's claims are accurate or not. But we can present some evidence on Piniella's behalf.
A new scientfic study (via Dianekes) has provided a mathematical model for the behavior known as "altruistic punishment".
Altruistic punishers are willing to pay a personal cost to ensure that people cooperate. Darwinists have puzzled over how this behavior could have evolved, since you would think that the people willing to perform such punishment would have a reduced chance of surviving and reproducing than those who do not.
Eureka Alert summarizes the findings thusly:
To examine how altruistic punishment could take root in a society, James Fowler developed a mathematical model that simulates interacting behaviors in a society over time. He found altruistic punishers can enter a population of cooperators and noncooperators and change the dynamics of the group. Under certain conditions, altruistic punishment is so beneficial to the population that it will come to dominate the behavior of the group and keep noncooperators at bay.So the self-policing behavior of beanball wars has several benefits:These results may help to explain the origins of cooperation and punishment. Previous studies have shown that altruistic punishment stimulates the reward center in the brain, suggesting that humans may have physically or developmentally evolved this behavior.
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