Welcome to Opening Day of the 2022 Major League Baseball season.
This marks the start of Box-Toppers’ 28th season tracking who most helps their teams win the most games, based on box score statistics. Here is an introduction to Box-Toppers:
What’s the most important thing in baseball?
Box-Toppers highlights
Here are recent post highlights:Picks 2022
Box-Toppers projects the standings and win totals of all 30 teams.Read more
Team rankings 2022
A look at how the 30 teams rank and compare going into 2022.Read more
Top 100 players since 1995
A look at the 100 top players in Box-Toppers points since 1995, when Box-Toppers tracking began.Read more
Top 100 players 2021
A look at the 100 top players in Box-Toppers points last season.Read more
Top player rankings 2021
The top 10 overall players, plus the top 10 NL and AL pitchers and batters.Read more
A look at Box-Toppers season-by-season AL & NL pitching & batting leaders, 1995-2021
Who led their league’s pitchers and batters in Box-Toppers points each season? Plus, further analysis of Box-Toppers points leaders.Read more
Box-Toppers detail leaders, season-by-season, 1995-2021
In a sprawling, scrolling chart, see the top 10 overall players for each of Box-Toppers’ 27 seasons, plus the top five or 10 players each season based on league, position and other factors.Read more
Winning the game, right?
But what baseball statistic provides the fan an indication of the player who most contributed to the win? Logically, you might answer “the win” statistic, but it only applies to pitchers. Plus, in some circumstances, the win is not awarded to the pitcher most responsible for earning the win, but simply the pitcher who was in the game when the team took the lead.
What is needed is a metric that will select the player—from among pitchers and batters—who most contributed to his team’s win. And that’s where Box-Toppers comes in.
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. As the season progresses, a player’s Box-Toppers point total can be compared with other players to determine the best player on a given team, at a given position—or even the best overall player in the game.
For example, in 2021, Dodgers pitcher Max Scherzer led all players with 25.1 Box-Toppers points. Here’s how he earned his points.
• He earned Player of the Game honors 16 times, giving him 16.0 Box-Toppers points.
• Three of those times, in addition to earning Player of the Game honors, he also won National League Player of the Day honors, worth 0.7 bonus points each, giving him 2.1 additional total points.
Click on the graphic to see the step-by-step method of how Box-Toppers Player of the Game and Player of the Day honorees are determined.
• Seven other times, he earned overall Player of the Day honors in addition to earning Player of the Game honors. He earned an extra 2.0 bonus Box-Toppers point for each Player of the Day honor, giving him 7.0 more Box-Toppers points.
So Scherzer received 16.0 Box-Toppers points for the times he earned Player of the Game, 2.1 points for the times he earned NL Player of the Day and 7.0 more for the times he earned overall Player of the Day, for a total of 25.1 Box-Toppers points.
Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole led American League pitchers with 22.4 Box-Toppers points, second among all players.
While neither Scherzer nor Cole won their league’s Cy Young Award, both winners were among the top 10 in Box-Toppers points in 2021:
NL winner Corbin Burnes of the Brewers ranked fifth with 18.1 points, fourth among NL pitchers.
AL winner Robbie Ray of the Blue Jays ranked sixth with 17.7 points, second among AL pitchers.
Jose Ramirez of the Indians led AL batters with 13.0 Box-Toppers points. AL Most Valuable Player Shohei Ohtani of the Angels earned 16.1 Box-Toppers points. While that was more than Ramirez, Ohtani did not qualify to rank among batters in Box-Toppers points because he earned such an overwhelming majority of his Box-Toppers Player of the Game honors as a pitcher. Ohtani did rank third among all AL players.
Nick Castellanos of the Reds led NL batters with 11.5 Box-Toppers points. NL MVP Bryce Harper of the Phillies earned 5.5 Box-Toppers points, 28th among NL batters.
Box-Toppers tracking began in 1995, posting in 2013
The Box-Toppers metric has been used since the start of the 1995 season to track players. We marked the 25th anniversary of the day Box-Toppers tracking began, April 25, 1995.
This is the 10th season for the Box-Toppers.com website. Box-Toppers’ first blog post was on March 25, 2013.
On the website and the blog, Box-Toppers will track each day’s games, showing each game’s Player of the Game and the top overall Player of the Day.
The website will also have regular posts weekly of overall Box-Toppers points leaders and team standings. These are usually posted on Fridays and will likely start a few weeks into the season as enough data is available to begin showing meaningful trends and results.
Box-Toppers will also have posts at other times as interesting Box-Toppers-related statistical nuggets are uncovered. For example, in January we published a Box-Toppers-centric analysis of the 2021 rules crackdown on pitchers using foreign substances on baseballs. Starting in June 2021, umpires began checking pitchers’ gloves, hats and belts for evidence they night be using sticky substances on baseballs to gain more control and put more spin on their pitches, making them harder for batters to hit. In short, we found that pitchers won fewer Box-Toppers Player of the Game honors after the rules crackdown went into effect, but that pitchers still dominated over batters, continuing a decade-long destabilizing trend.
On Twitter and Facebook, we’ll include shorter posts about newsworthy players, their standing in Box-Toppers points and often, how they compare in the stat to other players.
Stay up to date with Box-Toppers at the website, on Twitter, Facebook and through the RSS feed.
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.
Opening day starters’ Box-Toppers points
Here is a look at 2022 Opening Day starting pitchers for each team and how they’ve fared in Box-Toppers points. Each line shows a team’s opening game starter Thursday or Friday, their 2021 Box-Toppers point total and their rank among all players in Box-Toppers points in 2021. Also shown is their Box-Toppers point total over 2017-21, their rank among all players in that time span and their career Box-Toppers point total and rank among all players in career points since 1995, when player tracking began.Starting pitchers for each game are paired together in the chart—for example, the Brewers’ Corbin Burnes faces the Cubs’ Kyle Hendricks in Chicago in one opener and the Mets’ Tylor Megill faces the Nationals’ Patrick Corbin in Washington in the next game.
The chart is sortable. Click a column header to re-sort the chart by the values in that column. For example, clicking the 2021 BTPs column will show Gerrit Cole has the most 2021 Box-Toppers points among opening game starters. Refresh page to restore chart to the default game-by-game view.
| Team | Starter | 2021 BTPs |
Rank | 17‑21 BTPs |
Rank | Career BTPs |
Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brewers | Corbin Burnes | 18.1 | 5 | 28.8 | 71 | 28.8 | 801 |
| Cubs | Kyle Hendricks | 4.0 | 228 | 35.8 | 41 | 63.9 | 234 |
| Mets | Tylor Megill | 6.0 | 150 | 6.0 | 605 | 6.0 | 2318 |
| Nationals | Patrick Corbin | 6.7 | 118 | 48.8 | 18 | 81.3 | 139 |
| Guardians | Shane Bieber | 6.7 | 111 | 42.6 | 29 | 42.6 | 473 |
| Royals | Zack Greinke | 8.7 | 69 | 61.7 | 7 | 217.8 | 5 |
| Pirates | JT Brubaker | 4.0 | 258 | 4.0 | 769 | 4.0 | 2706 |
| Cardinals | Adam Wainwright | 12.0 | 29 | 30.3 | 65 | 142.3 | 30 |
| Reds | Tyler Mahle | 11.7 | 32 | 23.7 | 106 | 23.7 | 978 |
| Braves | Max Fried | 11.8 | 30 | 28.5 | 76 | 28.5 | 809 |
| Astros | Framber Valdez | 5.0 | 175 | 15.4 | 247 | 15.4 | 1370 |
| Angels | Shohei Ohtani | 16.1 | 12 | 30.6 | 62 | 30.6 | 746 |
| Padres | Yu Darvish | 13.1 | 20 | 51.6 | 14 | 107.2 | 70 |
| Diamondbacks | Madison Bumgarner | 10.0 | 46 | 29.7 | 68 | 135.4 | 33 |
| Red Sox | Nathan Eovaldi | 14.1 | 16 | 27.8 | 80 | 53.6 | 338 |
| Yankees | Gerrit Cole | 22.4 | 2 | 87.0 | 2 | 122.9 | 45 |
| White Sox | Lucas Giolito | 11.4 | 36 | 39.1 | 34 | 39.1 | 536 |
| Tigers | Eduardo Rodriguez | 10.0 | 47 | 43.5 | 26 | 54.2 | 327 |
| Athletics | Frankie Montas | 12.4 | 28 | 30.8 | 60 | 30.8 | 735 |
| Phillies | Aaron Nola | 10.7 | 38 | 65.0 | 5 | 73.7 | 178 |
| Orioles | John Means | 9.0 | 61 | 18.0 | 189 | 18.0 | 1203 |
| Rays | Shane McClanahan | 4.7 | 209 | 4.7 | 729 | 4.7 | 2625 |
| Dodgers | Walker Buehler | 16.7 | 10 | 53.9 | 12 | 53.9 | 331 |
| Rockies | Kyle Freeland | 7.0 | 105 | 27.4 | 84 | 27.4 | 850 |
| Mariners | Robbie Ray | 17.7 | 6 | 51.1 | 15 | 61.8 | 258 |
| Twins | Joe Ryan | 2.7 | 362 | 2.7 | 984 | 2.7 | 2755 |
| Marlins | Sandy Alcantara | 9.7 | 51 | 19.1 | 174 | 19.1 | 1149 |
| Giants | Logan Webb | 15.5 | 14 | 18.2 | 186 | 18.2 | 1196 |
| Rangers | Jon Gray | 4.0 | 232 | 32.4 | 53 | 39.4 | 530 |
| Blue Jays | Jose Berrios | 9.4 | 57 | 49.9 | 17 | 49.9 | 382 |