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:
| team | w | l |
| Athletics | 13 | 13 |
| Red Sox | 11 | 7 |
| Angels | 6 | 4 |
| Indians | 4 | 6 |
| Rangers | 4 | 6 |
| Blue Jays | 3 | 3 |
| Reds | 2 | 0 |
| Yankees | 1 | 1 |
| Tigers | 1 | 2 |
| 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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Pow!
Three run homer.
And the crowd starts chanting "MVP! MVP!"...not because they think he will or should win the AL MVP, but because they like him, they really like him, and "MVP" is a lot easier to chant than "Comeback Player of the Year! Comeback Player of the Year!" which is what he really should win.
Three cheers for Frank Thomas!
And the AL West lead is up to seven, and the AL West magic number is seven, and there are seven games left against the Angels, and seven games left against Not-The-Angels.
Catfish Stew has been brought to you by the number 3, the number 7, and the letters M, V, and P. See you tomorrow!
And yeah, I chanted M-V-P! too, though I immediatly turned around to my fiance and said "He shouldn't win it, but its nice to have a hitter good enough to cheer it!"
Jeter? Damon is that team's real MVP, and adding Abreu was when they started winning.
Jermaine Dye? See Ortiz.
Liriano or Johan? Well they are both on the same team, which one is "most" valuable then?
Seems to me that absent some late-season surprise from the Tigers (Leyland, if anybody, deserves the credit for that one), Frank Thomas could make quite the case for himself this year.
My seats were in the shade today, too, thankfully. From May-August, my seats are in the sunshine. But at the end of August they turn into shade seats.
7--3 is probably kidding, but it's also the exact reasoning that some writers actually use, so I suppose it's possible it could actually happen if a bandwagon thing gets rolling.
However, I find it hard to believe that the league's 4th-best DH by the numbers would actually win the award, especially when Ortiz didn't win it last year, mostly because he was a full-time DH.
And who are these other DHs with numbers better than Frank? Ortiz may well have taken himself out of the debate with his comments the other day (not that the Sawks' starters hadn't taken care of that), Hafner has the highest counting stats but his team could hardly be doing any worse without him, and Thome has Dye in his lineup providing far more protection (.322-42-117) than Nick Swisher (.254-42-86) is to Thomas.
If Frank Thomas puts up a .280-40-110 season, which he is only a couple solid games from doing, those look to me like the kind of nice big counting stats that MVP voters love. Now if only Joe Mauer would go ahead and win that batting title...
Ortiz did the same thing last year that Tejada did, with all the dramatic game winners and stuff, but many voters dinged him because he was a DH. There's a bias against DHes, to begin with, and then if you're not even the best DH in the league--just makes me think it's unlikely he'd win. I'm sure he'll get votes, though.
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