Box-Toppers Toppers Box
Today’s key Box-Toppers numbers. Click links to jump to charts elsewhere on this page.▪️ Top 10 players in 2022 Box-Toppers points.
▪️ A B-T look at Opening Day pitching matchups.
Welcome to Opening Day of the 2023 Major League Baseball season.
This marks the start of Box-Toppers’ 29th 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’ top 10 of 2022
Here are the players with most Box-Toppers points (BTP) in 2022.| Player | Pos | Team | BTP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Verlander, Justin 2112 | pi sp | hou al | 26.0 |
| 2 | Ohtani, Shohei 3933 | pi sp | ana al | 24.7 |
| 3 | Alcantara, Sandy 4061 | pi sp | fla nl | 21.1 |
| 4 | Woodruff, Brandon 3868 | pi sp | mil nl | 20.8 |
| 5 | Cease, Dylan 4231 | pi sp | chi al | 20.4 |
| 6 | Rodon, Carlos 3494 | pi sp | sf nl | 19.8 |
| 7 | Urias, Julio 3652 | pi sp | lad nl | 19.4 |
| 8 | Gallen, Zac 4171 | pi sp | ari nl | 18.7 |
| 9 | Musgrove, Joe 3705 | pi sp | sd nl | 17.4 |
| 10 | Darvish, Yu 3003 | pi sp | sd nl | 16.8 |
About Box-Toppers’ team abbreviations
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Winning the game, right?
But what baseball statistic provides 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.
Box-Toppers provides a metric that determines the player (pitcher or batter) who most contributes to their team’s win. 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.
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.
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 2022, Astros pitcher Justin Verlander led all players with 26.0 Box-Toppers points. Verlander earned his 26.0 Box-Toppers points by being Box-Toppers Player of the Game in 18 of the Astros’ wins, earning 1.0 Box-Toppers point each time. Eight of those 18 times, Verlander earned 1.0 bonus point for being Box-Toppers overall Player of the Day.
Verlander signed a free agent deal with the Mets for 2023.
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. Randy Johnson, who retired in 2009, leads all players in career Box-Toppers points since tracking began with 282.5.
This is the 11th season for the Box-Toppers.com website. Box-Toppers’ first blog post was on March 25, 2013.
We will endeavor to continue our daily and weekly posts. On the website and the blog, Box-Toppers has tracked each day’s games, showing each game’s Player of the Game and the top overall Player of the Day.
The website has also featured regular posts weekly of overall Box-Toppers points leaders and team standings. These have usually posted on Fridays and start a few weeks into the season as enough data is available to begin showing meaningful trends and results.
Box-Toppers also features posts at other times, especially when the statistic reflects trends in the game. Recently featured was a post about whether 2023 rules changes in baseball will finally place a check on pitchers’ decade-plus dominance over batters.
The post noted Box-Toppers statistics showing a precipitous drop in the share of Player of the Game honors won by batters after 2009. From 1995 to 2009, batters generally won half or more of all Box-Toppers Player of the Game honors, but since 2010, pitchers have taken over and dominated and have won 60 percent of all Player of the Game honors in recent seasons.
The decline in batter performance in the late 2000s and early 2010s coincided with the rise in the radical defensive infield shift. Now, with new rules banning that radical shift, the question is: Will batters be able to restore balance and again earn a larger share of Player of the Game honors?
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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.
Related
Box-Toppers top players of 2022: Top 10 overall players, plus the top 10 NL and AL pitchers and batters
Season-by-season leaders: A look at who led their league’s pitchers and batters in Box-Toppers points each season from 1995 to 2022
A Box-Toppers look at Thursday’s pitching matchups
A Box-Toppers look at the upcoming day’s probable pitching matchups. Teams are paired below with visiting teams on top and home teams on the bottom. Each team’s starting pitcher is shown with their Box-Toppers point total from 2023 (’23), over a two-year period (’22-23), over a six-year period (’18-23) and their career point total.Back to top
| Game | Starter | ’23 | ’22‑23 | ’18‑23 | Career |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATL | Fried, Max 4011 | 0.0 | 16.0 | 44.5 | 44.5 |
| WSH | Corbin, Patrick 3027 | 0.0 | 4.0 | 43.1 | 85.3 |
| SF | Webb, Logan 4258 | 0.0 | 9.7 | 27.9 | 27.9 |
| NYY | Cole, Gerrit 3232 | 0.0 | 15.4 | 95.4 | 138.3 |
| BAL | Gibson, Kyle 3312 | 0.0 | 9.0 | 34.5 | 53.5 |
| BOS | Kluber, Corey 3200 | 0.0 | 11.0 | 37.7 | 125.1 |
| MIL | Burnes, Corbin 4029 | 0.0 | 15.4 | 44.2 | 44.2 |
| CHC | Stroman, Marcus 3327 | 0.0 | 5.7 | 26.7 | 54.5 |
| DET | Rodriguez, Eduardo 3480 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 34.8 | 54.2 |
| TB | McClanahan, Shane 4399 | 0.0 | 16.4 | 21.1 | 21.1 |
| PHI | Nola, Aaron 3569 | 0.0 | 16.0 | 65.2 | 89.7 |
| TEX | deGrom, Jacob 3343 | 0.0 | 9.4 | 70.7 | 131.5 |
| PIT | Keller, Mitch 4230 | 0.0 | 2.0 | 7.0 | 7.0 |
| CIN | Greene, Hunter 4651 | 0.0 | 6.0 | 6.0 | 6.0 |
| COL | Marquez, German 3788 | 0.0 | 4.7 | 47.5 | 52.2 |
| SD | Snell, Blake 3688 | 0.0 | 13.1 | 65.4 | 74.4 |
| TOR | Manoah, Alek 4424 | 0.0 | 13.1 | 23.8 | 23.8 |
| STL | Mikolas, Miles 3034 | 0.0 | 12.1 | 26.8 | 29.5 |
| MIN | Lopez, Pablo 4028 | 0.0 | 10.7 | 33.8 | 33.8 |
| KC | Greinke, Zack 1871 | 0.0 | 4.7 | 46.3 | 222.5 |
| NYM | Scherzer, Max 2588 | 0.0 | 10.0 | 79.6 | 236.3 |
| MIA | Alcantara, Sandy 4061 | 0.0 | 21.1 | 40.2 | 40.2 |
| CHW | Cease, Dylan 4231 | 0.0 | 20.4 | 36.8 | 36.8 |
| HOU | Valdez, Framber 4048 | 0.0 | 16.0 | 31.4 | 31.4 |
| LAA | Ohtani, Shohei 3933 | 0.0 | 24.7 | 55.3 | 55.3 |
| OAK | Muller, Kyle 4454 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| ARI | Gallen, Zac 4171 | 0.0 | 18.7 | 34.4 | 34.4 |
| LAD | Urias, Julio 3652 | 0.0 | 19.4 | 45.5 | 52.2 |
| CLE | Bieber, Shane 4005 | 0.0 | 13.7 | 56.3 | 56.3 |
| SEA | Castillo, Luis Miguel 3840 | 0.0 | 10.0 | 46.4 | 54.8 |
* Player has yet to earn Box-Toppers points.
What are those numbers after players' names?
Chart is sortable. Click a column header to re-sort the chart by the values in that column. Refresh page to restore chart to default, game-by-game view.
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