What is Box-Toppers?
Baseball’s best players are the ones who do the most to help their teams win the most games.
Box-Toppers provides a unique metric to determine these players. This newsletter provides results from the Box-Toppers tracking method which began in 1995 and has been posted online since 2013.
Box-Toppers numbers tell baseball’s story
Using standard box score statistics, Box-Toppers uses a simple, consistent formula to determine a Player of the Game for each Major League Baseball game played. That player is the one who contributed most to his team’s win. Players earn 1.0 Box-Toppers point for earning 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.
Some notable Box-Toppers numbers
Here are just a few examples of Box-Toppers results through the years:
Justin Verlander led players in Box-Toppers points in 2022
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.
Randy Johnson leads in “all-time” career Box-Toppers points
Pitcher Randy Johnson leads all players in career Box-Toppers points since tracking began in 1995. Johnson earned 282.5 Box-Toppers points from 1995 to 2009, when he retired. However, Johnson began his career in 1988, prior to the advent of Box-Toppers, so his actual career total would be higher, estimated at about 385.
Clayton Kershaw leads active players in career Box-Toppers points
Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw leads active players in career Box-Toppers points with 269.4 points earned from 2008 to 2023. He ranks second overall since 1995, behind Johnson.
Albert Pujols leads batters in career Box-Toppers points
Albert Pujols leads all batters in career Box-Toppers points since 1995, earning 207.8 from 2001 to 2022, when he retired. He ranks seventh among all players in career points since 1995.
Stay up-to-date
Join us for daily posts during the season revealing Box-Toppers Players of the Day, weekly posts on top teams and players and other posts on interesting insights the Box-Toppers metric brings to light.
More information
Check out Box-Toppers.com on the web for our complete archives of more than 3,000 posts.
Some featured posts:
Batters’ share of Box-Toppers points earned plummeted in the decade of the 2010s.
A look at how top draft picks fared in career Box-Toppers points and rankings.
Box-Toppers marks 25th anniversary in 2020. We tracked our first game April 25, 1995, and have tracked top players in 60,000 games over the past quarter century. A look back at the very first Player of the Game winners and a look at Box-Toppers’ history—what has remained a constant and what has changed.
Thanks for joining us!
Shawn Plank became a baseball fan when he started collecting baseball cards at the age of 6, the black-bordered 1971 Topps cards. He developed Box-Toppers in the mid-1990s and has tracked every Major League game played since 1995. The Box-Toppers.com website was launched in 2013. He is a writer who has been a newspaper reporter and columnist, he co-authored a book and composed and recorded a song heard on The Dr. Demento Show.
