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In 2022, Justin Verlander led American League pitchers in season Box-Toppers points for the third time in his career, tied for the seventh-most times a player has led a season points category.
Also in 2022, the New York Mets and Miami Marlins each had their first Box-Toppers points category leader—Pete Alonso and Sandy Alcantara— leaving the Pittsburgh Pirates as the only team to never have a player lead a category since tracking began in 1995.
Read MoreAnalyzing 27 years of Box-Toppers points leaders among American League and National League pitchers and batters each season.
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The Los Angeles Dodgers maintain their lead in Box-Toppers weekly team rankings report for the fifth straight week.
Meanwhile, the New York Yankees rise to lead American League teams and the Cleveland Indians are the week’s hottest team.
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The Milwaukee Brewers continue to lead Box-Toppers team rankings at the All-Star break.
Meanwhile, the Chicago White Sox continue to lead American League teams and the Philadelphia Phillies are the hottest team since July 1.
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The Chicago White Sox rise to lead Box-Toppers weekly player rankings report, while the Los Angeles Dodgers tumble from first to eighth place.
Also, the Philadelphia Phillies rise to lead National League teams in Box-Toppers rankings and the New York Yankees are the week’s hottest team.
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The Los Angeles Dodgers lead Box-Toppers first weekly team rankings report of the 2021 season.
Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox lead American League teams. The Dodgers and the Cleveland Indians are the week’s hottest teams.
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Box-Toppers picks the Los Angeles Dodgers to repeat as World Series champions in 2021, beating the predicted American League champion team, the Chicago White Sox.
Box-Toppers projects the Dodgers will have the most wins among all teams—108—and will be the only team with more than 100 wins this season.
Read MoreAnalyzing 26 years of Box-Toppers points leaders among American League and National League pitchers and batters each season.
Read MoreIndians pitcher Shane Bieber tops Box-Toppers list of the top 100 players of 2020.
Bieber had 11.4 Box-Toppers points during the pandemic-shortened regular season. And because it was such a short season—reduced from 162 games to 60—it is the lowest total to lead all players since Box-Toppers tracking began in 1995, beating the previous low set by Royals pitcher Zack Greinke, who led all players with 21.5 points in 2009.
Read MoreBoth American League Division Series begin Monday.
The Houston Astros face the Oakland Athletics in one best-of-five game series and the New York Yankees take on the Tampa Bay Rays in the other series.
Read MoreRays pitcher Blake Snell topped players Tuesday in the four American League Wild Card games to open the 2020 postseason.
Snell was Player of the Game in the 3-1 win over the Blue Jays. In addition, Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole, White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito and Astros pitcher Framber Valdez were Player of the Game winners Tuesday in their AL Wild Card Game 1 wins.
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The Los Angeles Dodgers finish the 2020 season atop Box-Toppers team rankings, leading rankings for the sixth straight week.
Meanwhile, the Oakland Athletics rise to lead American League teams and the Cleveland Indians are the hottest team since the last rankings report Sept. 17.
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The Los Angeles Dodgers maintain their lead in Box-Toppers weekly team rankings for the fifth week.
Meanwhile, the Chicago White Sox maintain their lead among American League teams and the Cincinnati Reds are the week’s hottest team in the penultimate (and also next-to-last) weekly team rankings report of the pandemic-truncated 2020 season. The final team rankings report will be posted after the completion of regular season games Sunday, Sept. 27.
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The Los Angeles Dodgers maintain their lead in Box-Toppers weekly team rankings for the third week.
Meanwhile, the Chicago White Sox rise to lead American League teams and the Toronto Blue Jays are the week’s hottest team.
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The Los Angeles Dodgers rise to lead Box-Toppers weekly team rankings.
Meanwhile, the Oakland Athletics maintain their lead among American League teams and the Cleveland Indians are the week’s hottest team.
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Sixteen teams will make the postseason in 2020, rather than 10 under the previous plan. Eight qualifying teams in each league will be seeded from 1-8 and will faceoff in a best-of-three game Wild Card series played entirely at the home of the higher seed. Winners of the Wild Card will face off in the Division Series and the playoffs will proceed in a similar format to recent years.
One more revision for Box-Toppers postseason predictions now that the playoff format has expanded from 10 to 16 teams. While it provides six more postseason, it doesn’t change our pick of the Yankees over the Nationals in the World Series.
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Box-Toppers picks the New York Yankees to beat the Washington Nationals in the 2020 World Series.
Still.
We made the same prediction in March before the season was thrown into doubt by the coronavirus pandemic. Only the projected win total has changed.
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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.
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Box-Toppers picks the New York Yankees to beat the Washington Nationals in the 2020 World Series.
Box-Toppers projects the Yankees will have the most wins among all teams—110—and will be the only team with more than 100 wins this season.
Of course, these projections are made with the assumption that each team will play a complete 162-game schedule. That is thrown into doubt now that Coronavirus precautions have prompted baseball to suspend spring training and delay the start of the season.
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.