Those who figure Wins Above Replacement and those who figure Box-Toppers points (me) often don’t seem to be looking at the same game.

WAR leaders’ Box-Toppers points
Here is how 2019 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) leaders fared in Box-Toppers points. Players are ranked by WAR. Also shown are their 2019 Box-Toppers points (BTP) and their rank in Box-Toppers points among all players.




  
    
    Player
    Team
    WAR
    BTP
    Rank
  

    1
    Cody Bellinger
    Dodgers
    9.1
    11.2
    35
  

    2
    Alex Bregman
    Astros
    9.1
    10.0
    48
  

    3
    Marcus Semien
    Athletics
    8.9
    8.7
    74
  

    4
    Matt Chapman
    Athletics
    8.3
    9.0
    63
  

    5
    Mike Trout
    Angels
    8.2
    8.7
    68
  

    6
    Jacob deGrom
    Mets
    8.2
    19.1
    4
  

    7
    Mike Minor
    Rangers
    7.7
    13.7
    21
  

    8
    Lance Lynn
    Rangers
    7.5
    15.0
    16
  

    9
    Justin Verlander
    Astros
    7.3
    27.5
    2
  

    10
    Ketel Marte
    Diamondbacks
    7.2
    7.0
    111
  
BTP: Box-Toppers points

But we are. We are looking at the exact same Major League Baseball game. In recent years, Box-Toppers has seen pitchers come to so overwhelmingly dominate the game that they’ve pushed batters’ relative achievements into the background. But WAR seems to persist in the notion that it is batters who are primarily the stars of the game, contributing more to help their teams win than pitchers.

Pitchers dominate Box-Toppers’ top 100 in player season rankings—71 of the top 100 players in 2019 were pitchers, only 29 were batters. The highest ranked batter was Nelson Cruz of the Twins with 12.5 Box-Toppers points, ranked 26th among all players. That means Box-Toppers’ top 25 ranked players were pitchers. That means Box-Toppers sees pitchers primarily and overwhelmingly as the players who most help their teams win the most games.

But in WAR, batters hold six of the 10 top spots. And the leading player for 2019 is a batter, Cody Bellinger of the Dodgers, who led with a WAR of 9.1. Bellinger ranked 35th among players in Box-Toppers points with 11.2, which was third among National League batters.

Only two players in the top 10 in WAR also ranked among the top 10 in Box-Toppers points for 2019. Both are pitchers. However, nine of the WAR top 10 rank among the top 75 players in Box-Toppers points for 2019. Plus, five of the six batters among the WAR top 10 rank among the top 10 list in Box-Toppers points in either the American or National league.

Here are the two players—both pitchers—who rank in the top 10 in both WAR and Box-Toppers points for 2019:

Astros pitcher Justin Verlander ranks ninth in WAR (7.3) and second in Box-Toppers points (27.5), both overall and among AL pitchers.
Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom ranks sixth in WAR (8.2)—the highest WAR among all pitchers—and fourth in Box-Toppers points (19.1), second among NL pitchers.

Two other pitchers among the top 10 in WAR rank among the overall top 21 and among the top 10 AL pitchers in Box-Toppers points for 2019:

Rangers pitcher Lance Lynn ranks eighth in WAR (7.5) and 16th in Box-Toppers points (15.0), seventh among AL pitchers.
Rangers pitcher Mike Minor ranks seventh in WAR and first among AL pitchers (7.7) and 21st in Box-Toppers points (13.7), ninth among AL pitchers.

Interestingly, both Lynn and Minor rank ahead of Verlander in WAR, even though both trail him by a considerable, significant distance in Box-Toppers points. Verlander with 27.5 Box-Toppers points, has nearly twice the points as Lynn (15.0) and just over twice the points as Minor (13.7). Both Lynn and Minor’s Box-Toppers point totals are dwarfed by overall leader and fellow AL pitcher Gerrit Cole of the Astros, who led all players with 32.2 Box-Toppers points, the fourth-highest single-season total since Box-Toppers tracking began in 1995. Cole had a 2019 WAR of 6.6.

The five batters who rank among the top 10 in WAR who also rank among the overall top 75 players and top 10 batters in their league in Box-Toppers points are:

Bellinger, as previously mentioned, who leads all players in WAR (9.1). Among the batters leading in WAR, Bellinger ranks highest in Box-Toppers points with 11.2, 35th overall and third among NL batters.
Alex Bregman of the Astros, who ranks second in WAR (9.1) and 48th overall in Box-Toppers points (10.0), fifth among AL batters.
Matt Chapman of the Athletics, who ranks fourth in WAR (8.3) and 63rd overall in Box-Toppers points (9.0), seventh among AL batters.
Mike Trout of the Angels, who ranks fifth in WAR (8.2) and 68th overall in Box-Toppers points (8.7), ninth among AL batters.
Marcus Semien of the Athletics, who ranks third in WAR (8.9) and 74th overall in Box-Toppers points (8.7), 10th among AL batters.

The only player among the top 10 in WAR for 2019 who ranked outside the overall top 100 in Box-Toppers points is Ketel Marte of the Diamondbacks. Marte ranked 10th in WAR with 7.2, but ranked 111th overall in Box-Toppers points with 7.0, 16th among NL batters.

•

WAR is a statistic used to measure and compare players against each other and is the rare statistic used to directly compare pitchers and batters.

Box-Toppers was devised in the mid-1990s (before I heard of WAR) as a way of determining a top player in each game played, a top player of the day in each league and a top overall player for the day. Points are awarded to those top players and those points accumulate over the season to provide a data point to compare players.

While Box-Toppers points and WAR are both used to compare players, WAR is a very different statistic. BaseballReference.com, from which the WAR scores used here are derived, defines WAR as “a single number that presents the number of wins the player added to the team above what a replacement player would add.”

Box-Toppers is a much more basic statistic with a much simpler formula than the dozens or hundreds of steps needed to figure WAR. Box-Toppers, without apology, does not include any fielding statistics as part of its formula, as WAR does. Also Box-Toppers, in essence, measures the number of wins a player is most responsible for. WAR, as its name indicates, measures the wins that player would have above a replacement player.

So while WAR and Box-Toppers points differ in many ways, they are similar in one key way—they both attempt to directly compare the usually segregated pitchers and batters with one shared, integrated statistic.

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There were eight players—all pitchers—who ranked among the top 10 in Box-Toppers points for 2019 but who were not among the top 10 in WAR. Those pitchers, along with their WAR numbers (in parenthesis), are:

Gerrit Cole, Astros, first with 32.2 Box-Toppers points (6.6).
Stephen Strasburg, Nationals, third with 20.7 Box-Toppers points (6.2).
Charlie Morton, Rays, fifth with 18.8 Box-Toppers points (4.9).
Shane Bieber, Indians, sixth with 18.1 Box-Toppers points (4.6).
Zack Greinke, Astros, seventh with 17.9 Box-Toppers points (5.3, including 4.1 for his time with the Diamondbacks prior to the trade deadline and 1.2 with the Astros).
Josh Hader, Brewers, eighth with 17.7 points (2.7).
Mike Clevinger, Indians, ninth with 17.4 points (4.1).
Hyun-Jin Ryu, Dodgers, 10th with 17.4 points (4.8).

Box-Toppers’ top AL batter Nelson Cruz of the Twins (12.5 Box-Toppers points) had a 2019 WAR of 4.4. That compares to the 9.1 WAR of Alex Bregman of the Astros which led AL batters and ranked second overall. Bregman’s 10.0 Box-Toppers points ranked fifth among AL batters.

Box-Toppers’ top NL batter Marcell Ozuna of the Cardinals (12.0 Box-Toppers points) had a 2019 WAR of 1.9. That compares to the 9.1 WAR of Cody Bellinger of the Dodgers which led NL batters and all players. Bellinger’s 11.2 Box-Toppers points ranked third among NL batters.

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From the time of Box-Toppers’ inception in 1995 to about 2009, batters consistently won half or more of all Box-Toppers Player of the Game honors. But since 2010, batters’ share of points earned has consistently fallen to 45 percent or below—and as low as below 40 percent in two seasons.

As a result, the balance of power has shifted decidedly to pitchers; batters overall are earning far fewer points. In the decade of the 2000s, batters finished among the top 10 overall leaders in Box-Toppers points 23 times and there was only one season in the 2000s (2005) in which a batter did not finish among the overall top 10. However, in the decade of the 2010s, there was only one time in which a batter finished among the season’s top 10 overall players—that was 2013, when Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers finished eighth overall with 16.9 Box-Toppers points.

So while WAR still sees batters as the dominant force in the game, Box-Toppers statistics suggest/evince that the balance of power has decidedly shifted to pitchers.

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.

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