Box-Toppers Toppers Box
Today’s key Box-Toppers numbers. Click links to jump to charts elsewhere on this page.▪️ Top 10 players in 2024
▪️ Opening Day pitching matchups
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Welcome to Opening Day of the 2025 Major League Baseball season.
This marks the start of Box-Toppers’ 31st season tracking who most helps their teams win the most games, based on box score statistics. Here is an introduction to Box-Toppers:
What’s the most important thing in baseball?
Winning the game, right?
Top 10 players
Here are the top 10 players in 2024 Box-Toppers points (BTP) earned in the regular season.| Player | Pos | Team | BTP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zack Wheeler | pi sp | Phillies | 21.4 |
| 2 | Tarik Skubal | pi sp | Tigers | 21.1 |
| 3 | Dylan Cease | pi sp | Padres | 21.1 |
| 4 | Shota Imanaga | pi sp | Cubs | 20.7 |
| 5 | Chris Sale | pi sp | Braves | 19.1 |
| 6 | Luis Gil | pi sp | Yankees | 17.4 |
| 7 | Blake Snell | pi sp | Giants | 15.7 |
| 8 | Bryce Miller | pi sp | Mariners | 15.7 |
| 9 | George Kirby | pi sp | Mariners | 15.4 |
| 10 | Framber Valdez | pi sp | Astros | 15.4 |
But what baseball statistic provides an indication of the player who most contributed to the win? Logically, you might answer “the win” statistic, but it only applies to pitchers. Plus, in some circumstances, the win is not awarded to the pitcher most responsible for earning the win, but simply the pitcher who was in the game when the team took the lead.
Click on the graphic to see the step-by-step method of how Box-Toppers Player of the Game and Player of the Day honorees are determined.
Box-Toppers provides a metric that determines the player (pitcher or batter) who most contributes to their team’s win. 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.
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. 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.
For example, in 2024, Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler led all players with 21.4 Box-Toppers points. Wheeler earned his 21.4 Box-Toppers points by being Box-Toppers Player of the Game in 16 of the Phillies’ wins, earning 1.0 Box-Toppers point each time. Four of those 16 times, Wheeler earned 1.0 bonus point for being Box-Toppers overall Player of the Day. Two of those 16 times, he earned 0.7 bonus points for being Box-Toppers National League Player of the Day.
Wheeler is the Phillies’ opening day starter Thursday against the Nationals.
Box-Toppers tracking began in 1995, posting in 2013
The Box-Toppers metric has been used since the start of the 1995 season to track players. Randy Johnson, who retired in 2009, leads all players in career Box-Toppers points since tracking began with 282.5.
This is the 13th season for the Box-Toppers.com website.
The plan is to continue daily and weekly posts. On the website and the blog, Box-Toppers tracks each day’s games, showing each game’s Player of the Game and the top overall Player of the Day.
The website also features regular posts weekly of overall Box-Toppers points leaders and team standings. These usually post on Fridays and start a few weeks into the season as enough data is available to begin showing meaningful trends and results.
Box-Toppers also features posts at other times, especially when the statistic reflects trends in the game.
Most Box-Toppers Player of the Game honors during spring training—3, by 8 players: Cam Smith #Astros Gavin Sheets #Padres Paul Goldschmidt #Yankees Willson Contreras #STLCards Clay Holmes #Mets Garrett Crochet #RedSox Max Scherzer #BlueJays Spencer Schwellenbach #Braves
— Box-Toppers Baseball (@boxtoppers.bsky.social) Mar 27, 2025 at 6:29 AM
Look for Box-Toppers on social media—Bluesky, Facebook and Twitter (X)—which will feature shorter posts about newsworthy players, their standing in Box-Toppers points and often, how they compare in the stat to other players.
Get notified of every post via the Box-Toppers Email Newsletter. You can also follow Box-Toppers via the RSS feed.
Box-Toppers strives for accuracy. See a mistake in a post? A wrong name, wrong team, grammar error, spelling goof, etc.? Thanks for pointing it out! Contact Box-Toppers here. Let's fix it and make it right.
Related
Box-Toppers top players of 2024: Top 10 overall players, plus the top 10 NL and AL pitchers and batters
Top 10 overall players, top 10 pitchers & batters since Box-Toppers tracking began in 1995
Season-by-season leaders: A look at who led their league’s pitchers and batters in Box-Toppers points each season from 1995 to 2024
A Box-Toppers look at Thursday’s pitching matchups
A Box-Toppers look at the upcoming day’s probable pitching matchups. Teams are paired below with visiting teams on top and home teams on the bottom. Each team’s starting pitcher is shown with their Box-Toppers point total from 2025 (’25), this year and last year (’24-25), over a six-year period (’20-25) and their career point total.Back to top
| Game | Starter | ’25 | ’24‑25 | ’20‑25 | Career |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MIL | Peralta, Freddy 3965 | 0.0 | 13.4 | 53.2 | 69.9 |
| NYY | Rodon, Carlos 3494 | 0.0 | 12.7 | 45.2 | 70.3 |
| BAL | Eflin, Zach 3679 | 0.0 | 7.7 | 29.8 | 51.2 |
| TOR | Berrios, Jose 3791 | 0.0 | 9.7 | 41.5 | 79.0 |
| PHI | Wheeler, Zack 3204 | 0.0 | 21.4 | 72.6 | 105.0 |
| WSH | Gore, MacKenzie 4582 | 0.0 | 8.0 | 19.7 | 19.7 |
| BOS | Crochet, Garrett 4434 | 0.0 | 10.7 | 11.7 | 11.7 |
| TEX | Eovaldi, Nathan 2928 | 0.0 | 13.0 | 46.8 | 82.3 |
| PIT | Skenes, Paul 5005 | 0.0 | 13.0 | 13.0 | 13.0 |
| MIA | Alcantara, Sandy 4061 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 40.8 | 47.2 |
| SF | Webb, Logan 4258 | 0.0 | 11.0 | 49.6 | 51.3 |
| CIN | Greene, Hunter 4651 | 0.0 | 9.7 | 21.4 | 21.4 |
| LAA | Kikuchi, Yusei 4136 | 0.0 | 10.7 | 34.1 | 38.1 |
| CHW | Burke, Sean 5124 | 0.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| CLE | Bibee, Tanner 4792 | 0.0 | 14.0 | 22.7 | 22.7 |
| KC | Ragans, Cole 4889 | 0.0 | 12.0 | 16.4 | 16.4 |
| NYM | Holmes, Clay 4022 | 0.0 | 3.0 | 12.0 | 13.0 |
| HOU | Valdez, Framber 4048 | 0.0 | 15.4 | 51.1 | 56.8 |
| ATL | Sale, Chris 2806 | 0.0 | 19.1 | 29.8 | 172.4 |
| SD | King, Michael 4549 | 0.0 | 12.7 | 27.4 | 27.4 |
| MIN | Lopez, Pablo 4028 | 0.0 | 11.7 | 51.2 | 58.9 |
| STL | Gray, Sonny 3259 | 0.0 | 12.4 | 46.0 | 110.3 |
| DET | Skubal, Tarik 4414 | 0.0 | 21.1 | 51.2 | 51.2 |
| LAD | Snell, Blake 3688 | 0.0 | 15.7 | 58.6 | 104.8 |
| CHC | Steele, Justin 4415 | 0.0 | 8.0 | 27.1 | 27.1 |
| ARI | Gallen, Zac 4171 | 0.0 | 12.4 | 57.8 | 63.5 |
| ATH | Severino, Luis 3567 | 0.0 | 6.7 | 19.1 | 64.9 |
| SEA | Gilbert, Logan 4439 | 0.0 | 13.0 | 47.5 | 47.5 |
* Player has yet to earn any career Box-Toppers points.
What are those numbers after players' names?
Chart is sortable. Click a column header to re-sort the chart by the values in that column. Refresh page to restore chart to default, game-by-game view.
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