| 4/25/95 | BTG | Game | Player | AB | R | H | BI | IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MLB | +5.0 | LAD 8, FLA 7 | Raul Mondesi CF | 4 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ |
On April 25, 1995, the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Florida Marlins, 8-7, to open the 1995 regular season.
The next day, in Richmond, Indiana, where I lived at the time, I picked up my Palladium-Item newspaper from my front step, turned to the sports section and examined the box score for the game. Using a formula I devised during the previous season, I determined that Raul Mondesi was player of the game—the player who most contributed to the Dodgers’ win. Mondesi hit a pair of two-run home runs, doubled and went 3-for-4, scoring twice and driving in four runs.
That game 25 years ago today marked the beginning of Box-Toppers. Through the past 25 seasons—1995 to 2019—I’ve analyzed each of the approximately 60,000 regular season games played, determining a top player in each game, rewarding points to the top players and tracking those points for the past quarter century.
The Dodgers win was the sole game on the opening day of the 1995 season, which had been delayed until April 25 by the 1994-95 baseball strike. The 1995 season was shortened from 162 to 144 games.
Mondesi had a Box-Toppers game score of +5.0 that day, highest of all Dodgers players, to earn Box-Toppers Player of the Game honors worth 1.0 Box-Toppers point. Since it was also the only game of the day, Mondesi was also Box-Toppers Player of the Day, worth a bonus 1.0 Box-Toppers point, giving him 2.0 total Box-Toppers points, the first such points ever awarded.
Mondesi would go on to earn Box-Toppers Player of the Game honors five times during the 1995 regular season, including earning overall Player of the Day honors a second time on Aug. 1, giving him 7.0 Box-Toppers points for the season, which ranked 13th among National League outfielders. He earned 59.9 Box-Toppers points from 1995 to 2003, which ranks 57th among all outfielders since 1995. However, it should be noted Mondesi also played in 1993 and 1994 and likely would have additional career Box-Toppers points.
Box-Toppers’ first full slate of games, April 26, 1995
The next day, April 26, 1995, was the first full slate of Major League Baseball games for the season with 13 games played. Those Player of the Game winners are listed in the chart elsewhere on the page. Some of the highlights:
Royals pitcher Kevin Appier was Box-Toppers overall Player of the Day (6.2IP 0H 0R 2BB 7K W in the 5-1 win over the Orioles) earning 2.0 total Box-Toppers points. He had the highest Box-Toppers game score (+11.2) among the 13 who earned Player of the Game honors that day. Appier earned 16.4 Box-Toppers points in 1995, fourth among all players and second among American League pitchers. It was one of 11 times in 1995 he earned Player of the Game honors and one of four times that season he was overall Player of the Day. Appier earned 68.5 Box-Toppers points from 1995 to 2003, 107th among pitchers since 1995. Appier’s career began in 1989, so he would likely have additional career Box-Toppers points. (See the chart elsewhere on this page, Box-Toppers point totals of top players for April 25-26, 1995, to see 1995 and career Box-Toppers point totals and rankings for all Player of the Game winners for Box-Toppers’ first two days of tracking.)
Fred McGriff of the Braves was Box-Toppers NL Player of the Day (2HR 4-5 3R 5BI in the 12-5 win over the Giants) earning 1.7 Box-Toppers points. He earned 1.0 point for being Player of the Game and 0.7 bonus points for having the highest Box-Toppers game score (+7.0) among all that day’s NL Player of the Game winners. It was one of nine times in 1995 that McGriff earned Player of the Game honors. He finished the season with 10.7 Box-Toppers points, ninth among NL batters. The Braves went on to win the World Series in 1995 with players such as Greg Maddux (23.4 Box-Toppers points, second overall and first among NL pitchers), closer Mark Wohlers (9.0 Box-Toppers points, ninth among NL pitchers) and Ryan Klesko (11.0 Box-Toppers points, eighth among NL batters). [See detailed season leaders for 1995—and each of the subsequent 24 seasons through 2019—in Box-Toppers details leaders chart.] McGriff went on to have 57.7 Box-Toppers points from 1995 to 2003, which ranks 40th among all first basemen since 1995. (McGriff would likely have more career Box-Toppers points if his career which began in 1986 were tracked.)
Devon White of the Blue Jays was Box-Toppers AL Batter of the Day (3B 2B 3-4 2R 4BI in the 13-1 win over the Athletics) earning 1.5 Box-Toppers points. He earned 1.0 point for being Player of the Game and 0.5 bonus points for having the highest Box-Toppers game score (+5.0) among all that day’s Player of the Game winners among AL batters. (Pat Listach of the Brewers, Player of the Game winner in the 12-3 win over the White Sox, also had a Box-Toppers game score of +5.0, but White beat him for AL Batter of the Day honors because he had more at bats—four vs. three. The Brewers were in the AL in 1995.) White earned Player of the Game honors five times in 1995, earning 5.5 total Box-Toppers points, 16th among AL outfielders. White earned 29.0 total Box-Toppers points from 1995 to 2001, but his career began in 1985, so he would likely have more points if those games were tracked.
There was no NL Batter of the Day for April 26, 1995, because the day’s top NL player was batter Fred McGriff. The remaining 11 players who earned Player of the Game honors, listed in the chart on this page, all earned 1.0 Box-Toppers point.
Box-Toppers.com website launches in 2013
While Box-Toppers tracking began in 1995, it wasn’t until 2013 that results were shared more widely, when this website Box-Toppers.com was launched (that happened March 25, 2013, with a post incorrectly predicting the Dodgers would beat the Blue Jays in that year’s World Series.)
For the past seven seasons, Box-Toppers has, during the regular season, posted daily results for Player of the Day and Player of the Game winners (like this one for the games of Sept. 1, 2019), weekly tabulations of top players and teams (like this and this from Sept. 6, 2019) and periodic posts using Box-Toppers statistics to show leaders and trends in the game (such as this one showing the top 100 players in career Box-Toppers points since tracking began in 1995.)
Back when I began the system in 1995, there was no thought—no real possibility even—to share the system widely. It was done mainly so I could better learn about the game’s top players after not following baseball for more than a decade. The internet was in its dial-up infancy, at least for me, so there was no feasible way at that point to post results online. It was (and largely remains) a hobby.
Things have changed through the years. In the early years, baseball box scores were found almost exclusively in printed-on-paper newspapers. If games went late, beyond a newspaper’s press time, they did not appear in the next morning’s paper—and sometimes never appeared. Online box scores were only starting to become available but often they were incomplete. Trips to the library were necessary to track down out-of-town newspapers to fill in missing game box scores from the previous week. Box scores were often shunted into narrow spaces in newspapers, meaning they would only list a player’s last name—or worse, they would truncate or abbreviate a player’s last name. If there were no game narrative or only a limited one attached to the box score, it was sometimes difficult to know precisely which player was listed.
Only now, 25 years later, are some of those Box-Toppers results from the early days being fixed. Since the end of the 2019 season, I have been auditing Box-Toppers results for the 1995 season to make sure I’ve been consistent in applying the rules over the years. There have been a few minor changes in Box-Toppers point totals which I’ll address as the audit progresses. But the biggest change is correcting the incomplete results from the early days. For example, on June 2, 1995, a White Sox player listed as “Vllre, L,” in my newspaper box score was Player of the Game. Until I audited the results, looking up the complete box score recently on BaseballReference.com, I did not know that it was actually catcher Mike LaValliere, who played from 1984 to 1995 and earned Player of the Game honors twice in 1995, earning 2.0 Box-Toppers points.
Immediate access to accurate, updated information has become far more reliable in recent years. In the 21st century, box scores gradually became available online and were updated shortly after a game’s finish. Complete Box-Toppers results for all of a day’s games could be compiled the next morning. Technology improved to the point that it became easy enough to post results each morning on a website—and that’s when the Box-Toppers.com website and blog began in 2013.
I devised Box-Toppers to determine which players most help their teams win the most games. That seemed a very basic statistic that was—and is—being ignored or obscured by multi-factor formulas, the results of which can look correct if you tilt your head and squint at them hard enough. Not that such statistics don’t provide value, they do, but statistics that show players’ responsibleness for team wins—as Box-Toppers does—should also be seen for their value.
I devised Box-Toppers before I learned of WAR (wins above replacement), possibly before WAR had even come into vogue. Box-Toppers is not WAR. It’s a much simpler statistic that measures only a player’s key contributions to actual, real-life and discrete team wins.
Box-Toppers remains a constant amidst change
One change to Box-Toppers in 2020 is the new unifying logo/avatar, which appears on our website nameplate and in social media—Twitter and Facebook.
While Box-Toppers has always been a sidelight for me, it has after a quarter century been a reliable constant as life changes around me. Before starting Box-Toppers, I had been a newspaper reporter. I became a columnist, a writer and author and then, when my wife and I had two sons starting in 1996, a stay-at-home dad. With the current crisis recommending we all stay at home, that role continues with reprises and encores with both college-age sons now at home. (Maybe life isn’t changing that much around me after all.) Box-Toppers began after my wife and I left our home state of Iowa for Indiana. We later moved to St. Cloud, Minn., before returning to Iowa—the Des Moines area—in 1998.
So while I’ve changed roles and locations over 25 years, Box-Toppers remains largely unchanged. It began as a way to determine the top players in the game based on each game’s top player and each day’s top players. And while the way to determine those top players has remained unchanged, the results have changed over the years. The biggest and most notable change is that batters, who consistently earned half or more of all Box-Toppers points awarded prior to 2010, saw their status diminish considerably in the decade of the 2010s, as the balance of power swung decisively to pitchers. From 2000 to 2009, batters earned 51.7 percent of all Box-Toppers points awarded. But from 2010 to 2019, batters earned only 42.4 percent of all points. Pitchers were now earning between 56 and 60 percent of all points awarded each season.
Box-Toppers has shown the balance that was once in the game is gone as batters’ performances, relative to pitchers’, has declined and declined precipitously.
In retrospect, it is now clear something momentously shifted in baseball at the turn of the last decade in 2010. It was going to be interesting to see if anything similar happened in baseball with this new decade of the 2020s.
I did not expect the momentous change in baseball to begin the 2020s would be no baseball at all. In this, the oddest time I’ve ever lived through, the coronavirus pandemic has delayed the start of the 2020 baseball season. Though the delay of the season now is equal to the delay of Box-Toppers’ inaugural 1995 strike-shortened season, which began on April 25, it is difficult to see when or if the 2020 baseball season can even begin.
But baseball is the least of our worries. It is a scary time when we can’t and shouldn’t gather together because the risk is so high of spreading this contagious virus for which there is no current treatment, no current cure and can be deadly for too many people.
We will get through this and baseball, even in its absence, will help us—as we watch and remember games of the past and relive at least the past quarter century of baseball history here on this website as reflected through the Box-Toppers statistic.
•
On our first date, my wife Susan and I—both Iowa natives—went to the movie “Field of Dreams” and later spent part of our honeymoon at the movie site in Dyersville, Iowa, where the baseball field was created in a cornfield. Even if it were not a movie showing the magic of my home state, even if it were not the movie over which my wife and I eternally bonded, it was a movie that helped reintroduce me to the joys of baseball.
And in these times of turmoil, it becomes even more important. Near the end of the movie, Terence Mann, the character played by James Earl Jones, tells the baseball diamond-building farmer Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) that baseball reminds us of the promise of better times.
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again.”
About Box-Toppers—Box-Toppers tracks who most helps their team win the most games. Using standard box score statistics, Box-Toppers uses a simple formula to determine a Player of the Game for each Major League Baseball game played. That player is the person who contributed most to his team’s win. In regular season games, players earn 1.0 Box-Toppers point for being named Player of the Game and can earn bonus points for being Player of the Day or top player or batter in their league for the day.
Box-Toppers strives for accuracy. See a mistake in a post? A wrong name, wrong team, grammar error, spelling goof, etc.? Thanks for pointing it out! Contact Box-Toppers here. Let's fix it and make it right.
Box-Toppers Player of the Game winners, April 26, 1995
Here are Box-Toppers Player of the Game winners for April 26, 1995, the second day of Box-Toppers player tracking and the first day a full slate of games was played in the 1995 season. Player of the Game winners are listed from highest to lowest Box-Toppers game score (BTG)| 4/26/95 | BTG | Game | Player | AB | R | H | BI | IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MLB | +11.2 | KC 5, BAL 1 | Kevin Appier, W (1‑0) | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | 6.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 7 | |
| NL | +7.0 | ATL 12, SF 5 | Fred McGriff 1B | 5 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | |
| BAT | +5.0 | TOR 13, OAK 1 | Devon White CF | 4 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | |
| +5.0 | MIL 12, CHW 3 | Pat Listach 2B | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ||
| +5.0 | BOS 9, MIN ‑ | Aaron Sele, W (1‑0) | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | 5.0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | ||
| +3.0 | STL 7, PHI 6 | Scott Cooper 3B | 5 | 1 | 3 | 4 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ||
| +3.0 | LAD 4, FLA 2 | Eric Karros 1B | 4 | 0 | 3 | 4 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ||
| +3.0 | HOU 10, SD 2 | Derek Bell CF | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ||
| +3.0 | DET 5, CAL 4 | Juan Samuel DH | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ||
| +3.0 | NYY 8, TEX 6 | Danny Tartabull RF | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ||
| +3.0 | MON 6, PIT 2 | Jeff Fassero, W (1‑0) | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | 5.0 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | ||
| +2.0 | COL 11, NYM 9 (F/14) | Joe Girardi C | 7 | 4 | 4 | 1 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ||
| +2.0 | CHC 7, CIN 1 | Ozzie Timmons PH‑LF | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | ‑ |
AL—Overall American League Player of the Day, worth 1.7 total Box-Toppers points.
NL—Overall National League Player of the Day, worth 1.7 total Box-Toppers points.
BAT—Top AL or NL Batter of the Day, worth 1.5 total Box-Toppers points.
All other players listed here earn Player of the Game honors, worth 1.0 Box-Toppers point.
` Pitcher had a no-decision in the game and did not pick up a win or a save.
Box-Toppers point totals of top players for April 25-26, 1995
Here are Box-Toppers point totals of each of the Player of the Game winners for April 25 and 26, 1995, the first two days of Box-Toppers tracking 25 years ago. Players are ranked by their Box-Toppers point total they earned for the entire 1995 season. Also shown are each players’ rank in Box-Toppers points for 1995, followed by their subsequent career Box-Toppers point totals, their overall rank in career points among all players from 1995-2019, the year they began their career and the final year of their career. Since Box-Toppers tracking began in 1995, players who played before that might have earned additional Box-Toppers points if their careers were tracked prior to 1995.| Player | Pos | Team | ’95 B‑T pts | ’95 rank | Career B‑T pts | Career rank | Year began | Year ended |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kevin Appier | pi sp | kc al | 16.4 | 5 | 68.5 | 195 | 1989 | 2004 |
| Eric Karros | 1b | lad nl | 11.7 | 17 | 59.2 | 275 | 1991 | 2004 |
| Fred McGriff | 1b | atl nl | 10.7 | 23 | 57.7 | 282 | 1986 | 2004 |
| Derek Bell | cf | hou nl | 9.7 | 35 | 41.9 | 461 | 1991 | 2001 |
| Raul Mondesi | cf | lad nl | 7.0 | 79 | 59.9 | 266 | 1993 | 2005 |
| Joe Girardi | ca | col nl | 6.0 | 126 | 14.5 | 1367 | 1989 | 2003 |
| Devon White | cf | tor al | 5.5 | 143 | 29.0 | 749 | 1985 | 2001 |
| Ozzie Timmons | ph lf | chi nl | 5.0 | 181 | 7.5 | 2039 | 1995 | 2000 |
| Jeff Fassero | pi sp | mon nl | 4.0 | 204 | 49.3 | 370 | 1991 | 2006 |
| Juan Samuel | dh | det al | 4.0 | 223 | 10.0 | 1742 | 1983 | 1998 |
| Aaron Sele | pi sp | bos al | 2.0 | 340 | 55.2 | 302 | 1993 | 2007 |
| Danny Tartabull | rf | nyy al | 2.0 | 383 | 6.5 | 2192 | 1984 | 1997 |
| Scott Cooper | 3b | phi nl | 2.0 | 418 | 2.0 | 3304 | 1990 | 1997 |
| Pat Listach | 2b | mil al | 1.0 | 572 | 3.0 | 2949 | 1992 | 1997 |
Total players receiving Box-Toppers points in 1995—651
Total players receiving Box-Toppers points from 1995-2019—4,269
About Box-Toppers’ team abbreviations