Looking at the top 10 players in the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistic for each of the past 25 seasons gives the impression batters are holding steady as the dominant force in baseball.
WAR leaders’ Box-Toppers points
Here is how 2021 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) leaders fared in Box-Toppers points. Players are ranked by WAR. Also shown are their 2021 Box-Toppers points (BTP) and their rank in Box-Toppers points among all players.| Player | Team | WAR | BTP | Rank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shohei Ohtani | Angels | 9.1 | 16.1 | 12 |
| 2 | Zack Wheeler | Phillies | 7.7 | 21.1 | 3 |
| 3 | Marcus Semien | Blue Jays | 7.3 | 6.2 | 130 |
| 4 | Carlos Correa | Astros | 7.2 | 7.0 | 102 |
| 5 | Juan Soto | Nationals | 7.1 | 6.0 | 134 |
| 6 | Vladimir Guerrero Jr. | Blue Jays | 6.8 | 3.7 | 264 |
| 7 | Walker Buehler | Dodgers | 6.7 | 16.7 | 10 |
| 7 | Jose Ramirez | Indians | 6.7 | 13.0 | 21 |
| 9 | Robbie Ray | Blue Jays | 6.7 | 17.7 | 6 |
| 10 | Fernando Tatis Jr. | Padres | 6.6 | 10.2 | 45 |
Yet, in recent years, batters are striking out more and hitting for lower batting averages against pitchers who are holding batters down and stealing their lunch money.
Looking at the top 10 players in Box-Toppers points for each of the past 25 seasons provides a more accurate reflection of the game—one in which batters performed well and even dominated through about 2009, until pitchers’ announced their presence with authority from 2010 on.
In 2021, six of the top 10 players in WAR were primarily batters and four were primarily pitchers. (Box-Toppers counts Shohei Ohtani of the Angels as primarily a pitcher in 2021, for reasons described later in this post.) This continues a trend since 2004 in which a majority of the WAR top 10 each season were batters. But Box-Toppers’ top 10 list for 2021 includes no batters and, in fact, has not included a single batter in any top 10 list in any the past eight seasons. (See graphic above Batters among overall top 10 players: WAR vs. Box-Toppers.)
Batters in top 10: WAR vs. Box-Toppers
Number of batters each season that were among the overall top 10 list in Wins Above Replacement (WAR) vs. Box-Toppers points (B-T). There have been between five and nine batters among the WAR top 10 each season since 1995 (the remaining players are pitchers). There has been as many as six batters in Box-Toppers’ year-end top 10 (1996), but there has been a decline to zero in 11 of the past 12 seasons, as batters’ Box-Toppers points have declined, coinciding with batters’ strikeouts increasing and batting averages decreasing. (Box-Toppers tracking began in 1995.)| Year | WAR | B-T |
|---|---|---|
| 1995 | 6 | 3 |
| 1996 | 6 | 6 |
| 1997 | 5 | 5 |
| 1998 | 7 | 3 |
| 1999 | 7 | 5 |
| 2000 | 8 | 3 |
| 2001 | 8 | 2 |
| 2002 | 6* | 4 |
| 2003 | 5 | 2 |
| 2004 | 7 | 1 |
| 2005 | 7 | 0 |
| 2006 | 6 | 5 |
| 2007 | 8 | 4 |
| 2008 | 7 | 1 |
| 2009 | 7 | 2 |
| 2010 | 8* | 0 |
| 2011 | 7 | 0 |
| 2012 | 9 | 0 |
| 2013 | 7 | 1 |
| 2014 | 6 | 0 |
| 2015 | 6 | 0 |
| 2016 | 9 | 0 |
| 2017 | 8 | 0 |
| 2018 | 6 | 0 |
| 2019 | 6 | 0 |
| 2020 | 6 | 0 |
| 2021 | 6† | 0 |
* List included 11 players because there was a tie for 10th place.
† While Shohei Ohtani earned just over half his 9.1 WAR rating (4.9) as a batter, Box-Toppers counts him as a pitcher for 2021 because he earned the overwhelming majority of his Box-Toppers Player of the Game honors (nine of 12) as a starting pitcher and is not ranked among batters in Box-Toppers rankings. Were Ohtani listed as a batter, there would be seven batters among the WAR top 10 for 2021.
A look at Box-Toppers’ top 10 players each season from 1995-2021
A look at Wins Above Replacement (WAR) top 10 players each season, from BaseballReference.com
Batters’ share of Box-Toppers points earned has declined from about 50 percent or more through 2009 to 40 percent or less since 2010. From the inception of Box-Toppers in 1995, batters held at least one spot in the overall season-end top 10 list each year but one (2005) through 2009. In 2006, five of the overall top 10 players in Box-Toppers points were batters. But since 2010, only one batter has made a Box-Toppers’ season-end top 10 list: In 2013, Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers ranked eighth with 16.9 Box-Toppers points. (See chart elsewhere on this page: Batters in top 10: WAR vs. Box-Toppers.)
The WAR formula blithely, blindly keeps batters among the game’s leaders, despite the obvious shifts in the game favoring pitchers. Box-Toppers sees pitchers primarily and overwhelmingly as the players who most help their teams win the most games.
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 multitude 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.
Shohei Ohtani led players in WAR in 2021
Shohei Ohtani of the Angels led all players in WAR in 2021 (9.1). He ranked 12th among all players in Box-Toppers points with 16.1. He was also voted American League Most Valuable Player.
Ohtani is a once-in-a-century marvel as an outstanding two-way player, hitting 42 home runs and driving in 100 runs as a designated hitter and starting 23 games as a pitcher with 156 strikeouts and a 3.18 earned run average.
For 2021, Box-Toppers categorizes Ohtani as primarily a pitcher since he earned such an overwhelming majority of his Box-Toppers Player of the Game honors as a starting pitcher. (In 2018, Box-Toppers categorized Ohtani as both a pitcher and a designated hitter. In 2019, he was categorized only as a designated hitter. In 2020, he earned no Box-Toppers points.)
Ohtani played 155 games in 2021, serving as designated hitter in 126 and starting 23 games as a pitcher. He earned Box-Toppers Player of the Game honors 12 times—nine times as a starting pitcher and three times as a designated hitter. In order for players to be listed at a certain position in Box-Toppers points, they need to have more than 25 percent of their Player of the Game honors at that position. Ohtani earned exactly 25 percent of his Player of the Game honors as a designated hitter and so was not ranked as a batter.
Ohtani’s 16.1 Box-Toppers points ranked third among AL pitchers and would have ranked first among AL batters if he qualified to be ranked as a batter, ahead of Jose Ramirez of the Indians, who led all batters in 2021 with 13.0 Box-Toppers points.
Ohtani earned 4.0 Box-Toppers points as a designated hitter and 12.1 as a starting pitcher. Taken separately, his 4.0 points would rank 54th among AL batters and his 12.1 points would rank 11th among AL pitchers.
One thing holding Ohtani’s Box-Toppers point total down, especially as a batter, was that the Angels did not win many games. They finished fourth in the AL West with a 77-85 record. Despite Ohtani’s impressive offensive output, it was rarely the key to helping his team win more games. When he pitched, however, he made a clearer difference, and was the key factor in the Angels winning nine games.
The WAR statistic, on the other hand, gives him more credit for his batting over his pitching. According to BaseballReference.com, he had a WAR of 4.9 as a batter and 4.1 as a pitcher. (This adds up to 9.0, but apparently rounding brings the overall total WAR to 9.1.)
How WAR top 10 fared in Box-Toppers points in 2021
Just three of the top 10 in WAR were also among the overall top 10 in Box-Toppers points for 2021:
Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler ranked second in WAR with 7.7 and was third with 21.1 Box-Toppers points, second among National League pitchers, behind Max Scherzer of the Dodgers (25.1).
Dodgers pitcher Walker Buehler ranked tied for seventh in WAR with 6.7 and was 10th with 16.7 Box-Toppers points, eighth among NL pitchers.
Blue Jays pitcher Robbie Ray ranked ninth in WAR with 6.7 and was sixth with 17.7 Box-Toppers points, second among AL pitchers, behind Gerrit Cole of the Yankees (22.4). Ray was voted AL Cy Young Award winner.
Ohtani ranked next-highest in Box-Toppers points (12th with 16.1) among the top 10 in WAR. And since Box-Toppers counts him as a pitcher in 2021, he completes the list of four pitchers among the WAR top 10. (Ohtani did qualify to rank among batters in Box-Toppers points in both 2018 and 2019.)
Of the remaining six players among the top 10 in WAR, all are batters and only two of the six ranked among the overall top 100 in Box-Toppers points for 2021:
Jose Ramirez of the Indians ranked tied for seventh in WAR with 6.7 and was 21st with 13.0 Box-Toppers points, first among AL batters.
Fernando Tatis Jr. of the Padres ranked 10th in WAR with 6.6 and was 45th with 10.2 Box-Toppers points, second among NL batters, behind Nick Castellanos of the Reds (11.5).
The other four batters in the WAR top 10 ranked outside Box-Toppers’ overall top 100 players for 2021:
Marcus Semien of the Blue Jays ranked third in WAR with 7.3 and 130th with 6.2 Box-Toppers points, 19th among AL batters.
Carlos Correa of the Astros ranked fourth in WAR with 7.2 and 102nd with 7.0 Box-Toppers points, 13th among AL batters.
Juan Soto of the Nationals ranked fifth in WAR with 7.1 and 134th with 6.0 Box-Toppers points, 21st among NL batters.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Blue Jays ranked sixth in WAR with 6.8 and 264th with 3.7 Box-Toppers points, 59th among AL batters. He is the only player among the top 10 in WAR to rank outside the overall top 200 in Box-Toppers points.
How Box-Toppers top-ranked players fared in WAR
There were seven players—all pitchers—who ranked among the top 10 in Box-Toppers points for 2021 but who were not among the top 10 in WAR. Those pitchers, along with their WAR numbers (in parenthesis), are:
Max Scherzer, Dodgers, first with 25.1 Box-Toppers points (5.2).
Gerrit Cole, Astros, second with 22.4 Box-Toppers points (5.7).
Julio Urias, Dodgers, fourth with 19.1 Box-Toppers points (4.7).
Corbin Burnes, Brewers, fifth with 18.1 Box-Toppers points (5.7).
German Marquez, Rockies, seventh with 17.4 Box-Toppers points (3.3).
Brandon Woodruff, Brewers, eighth with 17.1 Box-Toppers points (5.7).
Jacob deGrom, Mets, ninth with 16.7 Box-Toppers points (5.0).
While Box-Toppers’ top-ranked AL batter, Jose Ramirez of the Indians, was among the top 10 in WAR, the top-ranked NL batter was not.
Ramirez ranked seventh in WAR with 6.7 and had 13.0 Box-Toppers points, first among AL batters and 21st overall.
Nick Castellanos of the Reds led NL batters with 11.5 Box-Toppers points, 35th among all players. He had a WAR of 3.2, which compares to the 6.0 WAR of Juan Soto of the Nationals, which led NL batters and ranked fifth overall.
BaseballReference.com says players with a WAR of 8.0 or greater are MVP quality, those with 5.0 or greater are All-Star quality, those with 2.0 or greater are starter quality, those with 0.0 to 2.0 are reserve quality and those with 0.0 or less are replacement level.
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.
Related
A Box-Toppers look at WAR leaders: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015. (There was no post on WAR leaders for 2020.)
A look at Box-Toppers’ top 10 players each season from 1995-2021
Year-by-year top 10 players in Wins Above Replacement, from BaseballReference.com