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
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For more information, please visit the Fairpole blog, or read the FAQ.
ESPN.com's baseball page has a poll up on the A's MVP. The choices are:
It's an interesting question, since the A's don't have a hands-down obvious MVP. Harden is leading the vote with 43%. Are the voters correct?
Let's look at the current top 10 A's players in VORP:
From this view, it looks like the voters have things right. Harden has a better VORP than Zito, even though he missed several weeks with an injury.
Here's a surprise: Blanton is tied for third in VORP! I never would have guessed would have been ahead of anybody on that top 10 list except Saarloos. I guess I better start giving Blanton some more love.
VORP doesn't take defense into account, though. With the A's leading all of baseball in defensive efficiency, we can give Chavez, Crosby and Johnson some extra props. But even so, Harden's VORP lead is pretty big, so he's still probably the team MVP.
The fun part of this poll is the state-by-state breakdown. Where are people not going for Harden?
The poll results are shifting from minute to minute, but as I write this, the electoral standings would look like this:
Street leads in Louisiana and Vermont, and is tied in Texas, Mississippi, and Maine. You gotta figure he'd be popular around Texas, where he's from and his dad is a hero...but Vermont and Maine?
Chavez leads in Alaska, and is tied in Nevada, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Mississippi. I guess they go for Eric in the less densely populated areas that aren't along the Canadian border (where Harden rulez).
Even though Zito is second in VORP, the only state where Zito even gets above third place in this poll is in Utah, where he leads. Why Utah, of all places? Do they love Zito there for some odd reason, or do they dislike Harden? I won't dare to guess.
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