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Tigers pitcher Tarik Skubal is Tuesday’s Box-Toppers Player of the Day, rising to second place in season player rankings and securing 2024 American League Box-Toppers Player of the Year honors.
Skubal struck out seven over seven scoreless innings, allowing two hits and one walk, in the 2-1 win over the Rays.
Read MoreSix of the 20 batters winning Silver Slugger Awards in 2023 were also among the leaders at their positions in 2023 Box-Toppers point totals.
The awards are given to the top batter in each position in both leagues, voted on by Major League Baseball coaches and managers. Box-Toppers, analyzing traditional box scores, tracks which player most helps his team win the most games, awarding points for the top player in each game.
Read MoreOnly two of Box-Toppers category leaders also won Players Choice Awards for 2023 as voted by the players’ union: Shohei Ohtani of the Angels, who was voted American League Outstanding Player and Gunnar Henderson of the Orioles was voted AL Outstanding Rookie.
Read MoreWhile Marlins pitcher Jesus Luzardo is Box-Toppers’ most improved player in 2023, our choices for Comeback Players of the Year are Eduardo Rodriguez of the Tigers and Jason Heyward of the Dodgers.
Meanwhile, the consensus choices for Comeback Players of the Year—Cody Bellinger and Liam Hendriks—did not rank very highly among Box-Toppers most improved players in 2023.
Read MoreBrewers pitcher Freddy Peralta is Saturday’s Box-Toppers Player of the Day.
Peralta struck out six over six scoreless innings, allowing one hit and two walks, in the 3-0 win over the Reds.
Read MoreTwins pitcher Devin Smeltzer is Thursday’s Box-Toppers Player of the Day.
Smeltzer struck out three over six scoreless innings, allowing three hits and no walks, in the 1-0 win over the Guardians.
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Randy Arozarena of the Rays and Jonathan India of the Reds were voted Rookies of the Year. They beat Box-Toppers top-ranked rookies, Bobby Dalbec of the Red Sox in the American League and Trevor Rogers of the Marlins in the National League.
Randy Arozarena of the Rays and Jonathan India of the Reds were voted 2021 Rookies of the Year by baseball writers.
Neither were among Box-Toppers’ top-ranked rookies in 2021. Arozarena was Box-Toppers’ eighth-ranked American League rookie and India was Box-Toppers’ second-ranked National League rookie.
Read MoreDodgers closing pitcher Kenley Jansen and Astros middle reliever Kendall Graveman are Box-Toppers Player of the Game winners in Tuesday’s two league championship series games.
Read MoreAthletics pitcher Sean Manaea is Wednesday’s Box-Toppers Player of the Day, rising to eight place in season player rankings.
Manaea pitched a complete-game, four-hit shutout, striking out eight and walking two, in the 6-0 win over the Mariners.
Read MoreAstros pitcher Justin Verlander had the biggest decline in Box-Toppers points from 2019 to 2020.
Verlander, who earned 27.5 Box-Toppers points in 2019 (second among all players), earned 1.0 point in 2020. His decline of 26.5 points was ahead of Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole, whose 7.4 points in 2020 represented a 24.8-point drop from the 32.2 points he earned to lead all players in 2019.
Read MoreA look at Box-Toppers All-Star teams for 2020 seems incomplete. So for added context, Box-Toppers is also looking at the All-Star teams over the past two seasons, 2019-20.
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Box-Toppers’ top-ranked team for 2020, the Los Angeles Dodgers, hold a considerable edge over the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2020 World Series.
Read MoreDodgers pitcher Julio Urias is Box-Toppers Player of the Game in Sunday’s National League Championship Series Game 7.
Urias pitched the final three innings of the game, allowing no hits, runs or walks and striking out none, in the 4-3 win over the Braves, as the Dodgers win the best-of-seven game series, 4-3.
Read MoreWhat would the 2019 baseball season have looked like if only the final 60 games were played?
In many ways, it would have looked exactly like the entire, overall 2019 season: From about July 25 on in 2019, the Houston Astros were Box-Toppers’ top-ranked team and Astros pitcher Gerrit Cole was Box-Toppers’ top-ranked player. Both also led for the overall 2019 season.
Read MoreTo get a reward, you need to complete a task. As other nations sacrificed to bring coronavirus case counts down, to flatten the curve, we didn’t. Cases increased. It seems crazy to reward ourselves now with baseball, putting many at risk, simply because we want it. We are not worthy.
And yet, here we are: So here’s an opening day introduction to Box-Toppers, tracking who most helps their teams win the most games, based on box score statistics. We begin our 26th season of tracking and our eighth season on the web.
Read MoreYankees pitcher Jordan Montgomery is Sunday’s Box-Toppers Player of the Day in baseball’s second day of summer exhibition games.
Montgomery struck out six over five scoreless innings, allowing two hits and one walk, in the 6-0 win over the Mets.
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Imagine a Major League Baseball season beginning normally in the spring and ending on June 4.
That’s what the proposed pandemic-shortened 60-game schedule for 2020 will seem like.
In 2019, most clubs had played at least 60 games by June 4. That was barely more than a third of the regular season’s 162 games (37 percent). But for 2020, if all goes according to plan and the coronavirus doesn’t intervene to cut it even shorter, 60 games will be the complete, entire season.
Read MorePitchers led their team’s players in Box-Toppers points on 25 of 30 teams in 2019. Batters led all team’s players on the other five. Chart shows the players who led his team’s pitchers and batters in Box-Toppers points in 2019.
Read MoreHow did baseball’s statistical leaders do in Box-Toppers points in 2019?
The leaders in three specific pitching categories—earned run average, wins and strikeouts—were among the overall top 10 players in Box-Toppers points. However, the leaders in three specific batting categories—batting average, home runs and runs batted in—did not fare well in Box-Toppers points. All three ranked outside the top 100 overall players in Box-Toppers points and also ranked outside the top 10 players among their league’s batters.
Read MoreThose who figure Wins Above Replacement and those who figure Box-Toppers points (me) often don’t seem to be looking at the same game.
But we are. We are looking at the exact same Major League Baseball game. In recent years, Box-Toppers has seen pitchers come to so overwhelmingly dominate the game that they’ve pushed batters’ relative achievements into the background. But WAR seems to persist in the notion that it is batters who are primarily the stars of the game, contributing more to help their teams win than pitchers.
Read MoreBox-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. Players earn Box-Toppers points 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.