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Rangers pitcher Lance Lynn is Friday’s Box-Toppers Player of the Day, rising to third place in season player rankings.
Also Friday, three other players rose in Box-Toppers season player rankings top 10 list after each earned Player of the Game honors—Reds pitcher Sonny Gray rose to fourth, Diamondbacks pitcher Merrill Kelly rose to eighth and Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole rose to 10th.
Read MoreDodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin is Wednesday’s Box-Toppers Player of the Day.
Also Wednesday, Jason Heyward of the Cubs earns Player of the Game honors for the second straight day, rising to ninth in season player rankings.
Read MoreCubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks is Friday’s Box-Toppers Player of the Day.
Meanwhile, Astros pitcher Justin Verlander extended his consecutive streak of seasons earning Box-Toppers points to 15, tied for the third-longest active streak.
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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 MoreAlex Rodriguez has the most career Box-Toppers points of all Major League Baseball number-one draft picks since 1990.
Rodriguez, who was the first pick in the 1993 draft, earned 187.0 Box-Toppers points during his career from 1994 to 2016, which is 10th overall since 1995 and second among all batters (behind Albert Pujols of the Angels with 201.8).
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 MoreDodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw leads the list of Box-Toppers Active Career All-Stars and is one of four active players included on Box-Toppers All-Time All-Star team.
The Box-Toppers All-Time All-Star team consists of the best players by position since Box-Toppers tracking began in 1995 and includes 10 players who have retired and four who are still active—Kershaw, along with Albert Pujols of the Angels, Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers and Astros pitcher Zack Greinke, who joined the All-Time All-Star team in 2019.
Read MoreThe Box-Toppers All-Star teams for 2014-19 consist of the best players over the past six seasons, which includes seven of the 27 players who are also on Box-Toppers 2018-19 All-Star teams.
Also, among the 27 players on the teams, there are eight players who are on Box-Toppers 2019 All-Star teams and six who are on All-Star teams over all three time spans—for 2019, for 2018-19 and for 2014-19. Leading the 2014-19 All-Stars is Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer, who ranks first in Box-Toppers points over that six-season period with 134.3.
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 MoreAstros pitcher Gerrit Cole, who led all players in Box-Toppers points in 2019, also led all pitchers in strikeouts during the season.
In fact, each of the top six-ranked players in Box-Toppers points were among the top 11 strikeout leaders in 2019.
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Justin Verlander of the Astros, who led all pitchers in wins 2019 with 21, ranked second among all players in Box-Toppers points with 27.5.
Verlander’s teammate, Gerrit Cole, who led all players in Box-Toppers points in 2019 with 32.2, ranked second in wins with 20.
Of the 12 pitchers with 16 or more wins in 2019, five of them ranked among the top 10 in Box-Toppers points and 10 of them ranked among the top 50 in Box-Toppers points.
Read MoreHyun-Jin Ryu of the Dodgers had the lowest earned run average of any pitcher in 2019 and ranked 10th in Box-Toppers player rankings.
The overall Box-Toppers points leader, Gerrit Cole of the Astros (32.2), ranked third in ERA (2.50).
Read MoreAnalyzing 25 years of Box-Toppers points leaders among American League and National League pitchers and batters each season.
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The Box-Toppers career points top 10 list had no new members during the 2019 season but saw a massive reshuffling among players ranked fourth through 10th.
Meanwhile, there was one new player rising into the top 10 list among pitchers in “all-time” career Box-Toppers points in 2019 (Cole Hamels of the Cubs). Plus, the top 10 “all-time” points list for batters was largely dormant during 2019 and included just two active players—Albert Pujols of the Angels and Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers. However, Cabrera actually rose from sixth to fifth place, while earning just 3.0 Box-Toppers points in 2019.
Read MoreRandy Johnson leads all players in career Box-Toppers points and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Johnson earned 278.8 Box-Toppers points from the time Box-Toppers record keeping began in 1995 until he retired in 2009.
Read MoreAstros pitcher Gerrit Cole tops Box-Toppers list of the top 100 players in 2019.
Cole had 32.2 Box-Toppers points during the regular season, which is the fourth-highest single-season point total in the 25 seasons of Box-Toppers tracking, which began in 1995. It was 1.5 points short of the record, 33.7, set by Randy Johnson of the Diamondbacks in both 2000 and 2002.
Read MoreClayton Kershaw and Albert Pujols lead Box-Toppers All-Decade All-Star team for the 2010s.
Kershaw earned the most Box-Toppers points of any player from 2010-2019 (210.1) and Pujols earned the most of any batter over that span (79.9), which is 25th among all players. The All-Decade All-Star team is made up of players who led their position in Box-Toppers points over the span of 2010-2019.
Read MoreGerrit Cole of the Astros, who led all players in 2019 Box-Toppers points and had the fourth-highest single-season point total in Box-Toppers’ 25-year tracking history, fell short of winning baseball’s top pitching prize Wednesday.
Teammate Justin Verlander, who ranked second overall in Box-Toppers points, edged Cole to win the 2019 American League Cy Young Award. Cole finished second in voting. In the National League, Jacob deGrom of the Mets won the Cy Young Award for the second straight year. He finished second among NL pitchers in Box-Toppers points behind leader Stephen Strasburg of the Nationals.
Read MoreTen of the 17 batters winning Silver Slugger Awards this week also were among the leaders at their positions in 2019 Box-Toppers point totals.
Read MoreNationals pitcher Patrick Corbin is Box-Toppers Player of the Game in Wednesday’s World Series Game 7.
The Washington Nationals win 6-2, defeating the Houston Astros in the best-of-seven game series, 4-3, with each game in the series being won by the visiting team.
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.