Aaron Judge of the Yankees is Box-Toppers’ top-ranked American League batter in 2022. But Shohei Ohtani of the Angels is Box-Toppers’ choice for AL Most Valuable Player.
Box-Toppers postseason honors ballot
Here is a look at Box-Toppers’ ballot selections for the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America (IBWAA) 2022 postseason awards. The ballot requires votes out to 10 places for Most Valuable Player in both leagues, five for Cy Young Awards in each league and three for each leagues' Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year and Reliever of the Year.Players are shown with their team and their Box-Toppers point (BTP) total for 2022.
| AL Most Valuable Player | |||
| Player | Team | BTP | |
| 1 | Shohei Ohtani | Angels | 24.7 |
| 2 | Aaron Judge | Yankees | 13.2 |
| 3 | Justin Verlander | Astros | 26.0 |
| 4 | Jose Ramirez | Guardians | 11.7 |
| 5 | Dylan Cease | White Sox | 20.4 |
| 6 | Yordan Alvarez | Astros | 8.7 |
| 7 | Alex Bregman | Astros | 8.7 |
| 8 | Shane McClanahan | Rays | 16.4 |
| 9 | George Springer | Blue Jays | 8.0 |
| 10 | Framber Valdez | Astros | 16.0 |
| NL Most Valuable Player | |||
| Player | Team | BTP | |
| 1 | Pete Alonso | Mets | 14.9 |
| 2 | Mookie Betts | Dodgers | 11.7 |
| 3 | Sandy Alcantara | Marlins | 21.1 |
| 4 | Brandon Woodruff | Brewers | 20.8 |
| 5 | Carlos Rodon | Giants | 19.8 |
| 6 | Julio Urias | Dodgers | 19.4 |
| 7 | Zac Gallen | Diamondbacks | 18.7 |
| 8 | Mark Canha | Mets | 8.7 |
| 9 | Joe Musgrove | Padres | 17.4 |
| 10 | Freddie Freeman | Dodgers | 8.5 |
| AL Cy Young | |||
| Player | Team | BTP | |
| 1 | Justin Verlander | Astros | 26.0 |
| 2 | Dylan Cease | White Sox | 20.4 |
| 3 | Shohei Ohtani | Angels | 24.7 |
| 4 | Shane McClanahan | Rays | 16.4 |
| 5 | Framber Valdez | Astros | 16.0 |
| NL Cy Young | |||
| Player | Team | BTP | |
| 1 | Sandy Alcantara | Marlins | 21.1 |
| 2 | Brandon Woodruff | Brewers | 20.8 |
| 3 | Carlos Rodon | Giants | 19.8 |
| 4 | Julio Urias | Dodgers | 19.4 |
| 5 | Zac Gallen | Diamondbacks | 18.7 |
| AL Rookie of the Year | |||
| Player | Team | BTP | |
| 1 | Julio Rodriguez | Mariners | 7.5 |
| 2 | Joe Ryan | Twins | 14.7 |
| 3 | George Kirby | Mariners | 11.4 |
| NL Rookie of the Year | |||
| Player | Team | BTP | |
| 1 | Spencer Strider | Braves | 13.4 |
| 2 | Nolan Gorman | Cardinals | 5.0 |
| 3 | Brendan Donovan | Cardinals | 4.0 |
| AL Manager of the Year | |||
| Player | Team | Team BTP | |
| 1 | Dusty Baker | Astros | 131.4 |
| 2 | Aaron Boone | Yankees | 125.9 |
| 3 | Scott Servais | Mariners | 114.9 |
| NL Manager of the Year | |||
| Player | Team | Team BTP | |
| 1 | Dave Roberts | Dodgers | 133.1 |
| 2 | Brian Snitker | Braves | 129.0 |
| 3 | Buck Showalter | Mets | 125.8 |
| AL Reliever of the Year | |||
| Player | Team | BTP | |
| 1 | Scott Barlow | Royals | 7.0 |
| 2 | Ryan Pressly | Astros | 6.0 |
| 3 | Caleb Thielbar | Twins | 5.7 |
| NL Reliever of the Year | |||
| Player | Team | BTP | |
| 1 | Daniel Bard | Rockies | 8.0 |
| 2 | Edwin Diaz | Mets | 7.0 |
| 3 | Josh Hader | Padres | 6.0 |
While MVP is traditionally a batter's award, it has been awarded to pitchers either when they have a dominant season, no batters particularly rise to the occasion—or both.
Box-Toppers cast votes for postseason honors for Ohtani, Justin Verlander, Sandy Alcantara and Pete Alonso, among others, in the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America (IBWAA) balloting, completed at the end of the regular season, prior to the start of postseason play.
An overview of Box-Toppers’ choices:
American League Most Valuable Player—Shohei Ohtani of the Angels.
National League Most Valuable Player—Pete Alonso of the Mets.
American League Cy Young Award—Justin Verlander of the Astros.
National League Cy Young Award—Sandy Alcantara of the Marlins.
American League Rookie of the Year—Julio Rodriguez of the Mariners.
National League Rookie of the Year—Braves pitcher Spencer Strider.
American League Manager of the Year—Dusty Baker of the Astros.
National League Manager of the Year—Dave Roberts of the Dodgers.
American League Reliever of the Year—Scott Barlow of the Royals.
National League Reliever of the Year—Daniel Bard of the Rockies.
American League Most Valuable Player
Shohei Ohtani, Angels
At first glance, Aaron Judge of the Yankees is AL MVP. He led all AL batters with 13.2 Box-Toppers points in a season in which he hit 62 home runs, breaking the 61-year-old AL single-season record.
Judge also had more than half of the Box-Toppers points of top AL pitcher, Justin Verlander of the Astros (26.0). In recent seasons, Box-Toppers has awarded its MVP to pitchers who have more than twice as many points as the league’s top batter. In this case, it was close, but doubling Judge’s 13.2 points gives him 26.4 points to Verlander’s 26.0.
Ohtani earned 24.7 points in 2022. However, he earned 5.0 of those points as a designated hitter. Since we’re doubling Judge’s points as a batter, we should double those Ohtani earned as a batter, too. So doubling those points (10.0) and adding them to the points he earned as a starting pitcher (19.7), gives Ohtani an adjusted total of 29.7, more than both Judge (26.4) and Verlander (26.0).
That’s why we voted Ohtani over both Judge and Verlander for AL MVP.
In 2021, the year Ohtani actually won AL MVP by unanimous vote of baseball writers, Box-Toppers had Ohtani in the eighth-place spot on its ballot. He earned 16.1 Box-Toppers points that year. In retrospect, we should have adjusted his total, reflecting the 4.0 points he earned as a batter that season. That would have given him an adjusted total of 20.1 points, enough to raise him to fifth-place on Box-Toppers’ 2021 AL MVP ballot. We still would have given the 2021 award to Jose Ramirez of Cleveland, who had 13.0 points (adjusted to 26.0 points). With the adjustment, Ohtani would have finished just ahead of Judge last year, too. Judge had 9.0 points in 2021 (adjusted to 18.0).
While the AL MVP is normally a batters’ award, among the 10 choices on Box-Toppers’ ballot, only five are batters. Pitchers simply have continued to build their dominance in the past decade or so, making batters less relevant. Only two AL batters had more than 10 Box-Toppers points this season—Judge and Jose Ramirez of the Guardians (11.7). Contrast that to 1995 to 2002, when each year 10 or more AL batters had 10.0 or more points.
National League Most Valuable Player
Pete Alonso, Mets
Alonso led all batters in 2022 with 14.9 Box-Toppers points, the highest single-season point total for a batter since 2017, when Anthony Rizzo of the Cubs had 15.5.
Alonso earns the award because he had twice as many points as the top NL pitcher Sandy Alcantara of the Marlins (21.1). One other batter also had twice as many points as Alcantara—Mookie Betts of the Dodgers with 11.7 points, Box-Toppers’ vote for NL MVP runner-up. Alcantara, the top NL pitcher, finishes third on Box-Toppers’ ballot.
While two batters finish in the top two spots on Box-Toppers’ NL MVP ballot, only four of the 10 ballot spots are occupied by batters. Again, pitchers are so dominating Player of the Game honors even with the arbitrary doubling point adjustment for batters. As in the AL, only two NL batters reached 10.0 Box-Toppers points in 2022—Alonso and Betts.
American League Cy Young Award
Justin Verlander, Astros
Verlander led all players in Box-Toppers points in 2022, securing the lead only on Oct. 4, the next-to-last day of the season.
Verlander passed Angels pitcher Shohei Ohtani (24.7 points) for the lead that day. While Ohtani fell to second place, we rank him third on our ballot for AL Cy Young because he earned 5.0 of those points as a designated hitter. If we subtract his non-pitcher points from his total, that gives him 19.7 points, which is behind the 20.4 points earned by White Sox pitcher Dylan Cease, who ranks third among AL pitchers and fifth among all players. So we put Cease in second on our AL Cy Young ballot, even though he has fewer total Box-Toppers points than Ohtani (20.4 vs. 24.7).
In other words, the factor that helped boost Ohtani to earn our MVP vote, counted against him in the Cy Young vote. Even if Verlander did not earn Player of the Day honors on Oct. 4 and Ohtani finished the season 0.7 points ahead of Verlander in first place among AL pitchers, we would have voted Verlander for AL Cy Young after subtracting Ohtani’s points earned from batting.
National League Cy Young Award
Sandy Alcantara, Marlins
Alcantara led NL pitchers with 21.1 Box-Toppers points, leading NL pitchers in Box-Toppers weekly player rankings for 10 of the final 11 weeks of the season.
The gap between Alcantara and the pack narrowed as the season neared the end. In fact, Giants pitcher Carlos Rodon ranked ahead in the Sept. 15 player rankings. In the final days of the season, several pitchers had the chance to snipe the lead from Alcantara, but he finished with a 0.3-point lead over second-place NL pitcher, Brandon Woodruff of the Brewers (20.8).
Rookies of the Year
AL—Julio Rodriguez, Mariners
NL—Spencer Strider, Braves
Box-Toppers’ Rookie of the Year choices: American League—Julio Rodriguez of the Mariners. National League—Braves pitcher Spencer Strider.
We vote center fielder Julio Rodriguez of the Mariners as AL Rookie of the Year and Braves pitcher Spencer Strider as NL Rookie of the Year.
Rodriguez earned 7.5 Box-Toppers points in 2022 (90th among all players and eighth among AL batters), which was slightly more than half the point total of the top AL rookie pitcher, Joe Ryan of the Twins (14.7). As in our vote for MVP, we give batters the benefit of a doubt in this award, doubling their point total when comparing them to pitchers. In this case, that gives Rodriguez 15.0 points to Ryan’s 14.7. By that narrow margin, we give Rodriguez AL Rookie of the Year.
One notable thing: Rodriguez earned all of his 7.5 points July 17 and earlier. He got off to a fast start but earned only 1.0 point in the second half of the season. By contrast, Ryan earned 9.0 of his 14.7 points on July 1 or later.
We voted Rodriguez’s teammate, pitcher George Kirby, in third place on the AL rookie ballot. He earned 11.4 points. The next highest-ranked AL rookie batter is Steven Kwan of the Guardians (5.0 points).
Strider earned 13.4 Box-Toppers points in 2022 (27th among all players and 13th among NL pitchers). He had more than twice as many Box-Toppers points as the top NL rookie batter, Nolan Gorman of the Cardinals (5.0), who we voted second for NL top rookie. Also, we voted Brendan Donovan of the Cardinals (4.0) in third place.
Box-Toppers’ next-highest ranked NL rookie pitcher was Nick Lodolo of the Reds (7.0), who we had as the eighth-ranked NL rookie (not on this ballot), behind Joey Meneses of the Nationals (4.0), Oneil Cruz of the Pirates (3.5), Michael Harris of the Braves (3.5) and Christopher Morel of the Cubs (3.5).
Managers of the Year
AL—Dusty Baker, Astros
NL—Dave Roberts, Dodgers
Our criteria for this award is straightforward: Which teams had the most Box-Toppers points. The Dodgers led all teams with 133.1 accumulated Box-Toppers points, so Roberts is first on Box-Toppers’ NL managers ballot. The Astros led AL teams with 131.4 Box-Toppers points, second overall, and so Baker is first on Box-Toppers’ AL managers ballot.
Relievers of the Year
AL—Scott Barlow, Royals
NL—Daniel Bard, Rockies
Bard, who led all closers with 8.0 Box-Toppers points, is our choice for NL Reliever of the Year.
Barlow, who led AL closers with 7.0 Box-Toppers points, is our choice for AL Reliever of the Year.
Bard had the sixth-most saves in 2022 (34), third among NL pitchers. Kenley Jansen of the Braves, who led NL relievers with 41 saves, had 4.0 Box-Toppers points, eighth among NL closers.
Barlow had the 12th-most saves in 2022 (24), sixth among AL pitches. Emmanuel Clase of the Guardians, who led AL relievers with 42 saves, had 2.0 Box-Toppers points, 24th among AL closers.
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These are only Box-Toppers’ choices for awards. The collective IBWAA voting results will be announced in November, around the time the “official” Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) awards are revealed.
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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