Box-Toppers Toppers Box
Today’s key Box-Toppers numbers. Click links to jump to charts elsewhere on this page.▪️ Upcoming pitching matchups
▪️ Subscribe to newsletter
▪️ Support Box-Toppers
Box-Toppers coverage of the 2025 Major League Baseball season begins with the first spring training game Thursday.
Since 1995, Box-Toppers has tracked each Major League game played, tracking 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.
Source: SportsLogos.Net
For example, in 2024, Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler led all players with 21.4 Box-Toppers points, Tigers pitcher Tarik Skubal led American League pitchers with 21.1, Aaron Judge of the Yankees led AL batters with 13.0 and Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers led NL batters with 11.0.
Three of those four Box-Toppers category leaders also won major postseason awards—Skubal won the AL Cy Young Award and Judge and Ohtani each won their league’s Most Valuable Player awards. Wheeler finished second in NL Cy Young voting, behind Braves pitcher Chris Sale, who finished fourth among NL pitchers with 19.1 Box-Toppers points.
Thursday features only one game—the Chicago Cubs against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Arizona—and because it is a spring game, no Box-Toppers points will be awarded to a Player of the Game. However, as long as the game is not a tie (which happens in spring games), a Box-Toppers Player of the Game winner will be determined. Follow Box-Toppers via RSS, X (Twitter), Bluesky or subscribe to the Box-Toppers newsletter to be notified of each day’s Player of the Game winners.
See the chart for a Box-Toppers look at the probable pitching matchup in Thursday’s game, showing the starters’ Box-Toppers point totals in 2024, for the period 2020-24 and for their career.
Six spring training games are slated for Friday.
The regular season begins Tuesday, March 18 with a two-game series between the Dodgers and Cubs in Tokyo, Japan. A full slate of regular season games begins Thursday, March 27.
About Box-Toppers
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.
For additional updates, follow Box-Toppers on Bluesky or Twitter (X).
Related
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 2025 (’25)†, last year (’24), over a five-year period (’20-24) and their career point total.Back to top
| Game | Starter | ’25† | ’24 | ’20‑24 | Career |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CHC | Poteet, Cody 4405 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 |
| LAD | Yamamoto, Yoshinobu 4964 | 0.0 | 6.4 | 6.4 | 6.4 |
Games shown are spring training games between MLB teams. Doesn't include games vs. non-MLB teams.
† Players don’t earn Box-Toppers points in spring training games, only regular season games, so no pitcher has earned any points in 2025.
* Player has yet to earn any career 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.
Back to top