Cardinals closer Trevor Rosenthal is Box-Toppers Player of the Day for the second straight World Series game.
Rosenthal is Box-Toppers top player in Saturday's Game 3, pitching the final five outs to lead the Cardinals to a 5-4 win over the Red Sox. The Cardinals now lead the World Series two games to one.
Rosenthal struck out two and gave up one hit over 1 2/3 innings and earned the win when the Cardinals scored the walk-off winning run on an obstruction call when Allen Craig got tangled in Red Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks' feet as he was trying to score from third on an overthrow. Craig was tagged out at the plate, but was ruled safe at home because of the obstruction call.
Rosenthal had 6.0 Box-Toppers points during the regular season, ranking 147th overall. He was also Box-Toppers Player of the Day in Game 2.
Coming Sunday: The World Series resumes Sunday in St. Louis. Here is the pitching match-up:
World Series Game 4, Cardinals lead Red Sox 2-1
Red Sox: Clay Buchholz, 11.1 Box-Toppers points, ranked 41st overall.
Cardinals: Lance Lynn, 16.1 Box-Toppers points, ranked 11th overall.
Box-Toppers tracks players who most help their team win the most games. Top players from the winning team of each game are determined by a formula using standard box score statistics. In regular season games, 2.0 Box-Toppers points are awarded for Player of the Day, 1.7 for top player in the opposite league, 1.5 for top batter in each league and 1.0 for the top player in each of the other games.
Related story: Box-Toppers previews 2013 World Series in this post from Oct. 21.
Top 6 players in World Series Game 3
Here are the top six Cardinals players in Saturday's World Series Game 3, ranked from highest to lowest Box-Toppers game score (how game score is calculated). Trevor Rosenthal, who had a Box-Toppers game score of 2.2, was Player of the Game (POG). He narrowly edged out starter Joe Kelly, who had a game score of 2.1, for top player. Highest-ranking batter was Matt Holliday (game score of 1.0), who went 2-for-5 and drove in three runs.
| 1026 | Score | Team | BATTERS | AB | R | H | RBI | BB | SO | - | - | PITCHERS | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| POG | 2.2 | Cardinals | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Trevor Rosenthal (W, 1-0) | 1.2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| 2.1 | Cardinals | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Joe Kelly | 5.1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 6 | |
| 2.0 | Cardinals | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Kevin Siegrist | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| 1.0 | Cardinals | Matt Holliday LF | 5 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 1.0 | Cardinals | Allen Craig PH | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 0.0 | Cardinals | Yadier Molina C | 4 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |