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.
Final Regular Season Champion:
Atlanta Braves
2008 Title Bout Records:
| Mets | 26 | 19 |
| Cubs | 16 | 4 |
| Phillies | 15 | 14 |
| Athletics | 13 | 13 |
| Red Sox | 11 | 7 |
| Padres | 10 | 9 |
| Braves | 9 | 7 |
| Nationals | 9 | 15 |
| Rockies | 7 | 14 |
| Brewers | 6 | 1 |
| Angels | 6 | 4 |
| Indians | 6 | 11 |
| Cardinals | 5 | 5 |
| Reds | 5 | 5 |
| Marlins | 5 | 5 |
| Dodgers | 5 | 7 |
| Rangers | 4 | 6 |
| Blue Jays | 3 | 3 |
| Mariners | 2 | 1 |
| Yankees | 2 | 3 |
| Tigers | 1 | 2 |
| Giants | 0 | 3 |
| Orioles | 0 | 3 |
| Pirates | 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.
(For those not familiar with this kind of chart, it's a product of these two posts in the offseason.)
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On a night when Rich Harden needed but a single run to secure a victory for the green and gold, the A's poured out nine of them. Dan Haren and Joe Blanton could have used some of those in the first two games of the series, but no one has yet found a way to put runs into a savings account for days like that.
Harden wasn't as dominant as he was in spring training, but we can't expect him to strike out almost 15 per nine innings in the regular season. His current 9.0 SO/9 is perfectly fine by me.
His first three innings were fantastic, but Harden ran into some trouble in the fourth. Ichiro singled, and then Adrian Beltre worked an eight pitch at-bat before grounding into a double play. For some reason, Harden then issued a four-pitch walk to Jose Vidro, the first of two four-pitch walks on the game for Harden.
From the fourth inning on, Harden threw 23 balls. He threw only seven in the first three innings. Over the course of the game, he threw first-pitch balls to nine of the 25 batters he faced.
I don't mean to be overly critical of Harden's outing, though. When you have to break it down that far to find anything, there's not much to worry about.
Did you see the Mariners' first hit? It was a perfectly thrown 0-2 splitter, about a inch off the ground and three inches off the plate. Ichiro golfed it over the shortstop's head for a single. How do you pitch to a guy who can do that?
If it were me, I would simplify the colors and get rid of the gray background. Also, I'd throw in vertical lines for every change of batter instead of every out. And I'd get rid of the "strikeout" line, because you lose information using that (I'd rather know if it was a called or swinging strike, and the vertical line tells me that it was a strikeout).
I guess the progression on the Y axis from best to worst outcome is okay, but not really relevant to me, as a reader. I'd get more out of seeing balls not in play above the line, and balls in play below the line (or vice versa).
Hope you don't mind -- just some thoughts.
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