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Today’s key Box-Toppers numbers. Click links to jump to charts elsewhere on this page.
▪️ Top 10 players in 2025
▪️ Opening Day pitching matchups
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▪️ Support Box-Toppers

Welcome to Opening Day of the 2026 Major League Baseball season.

This marks the 32nd season of Box-Toppers tracking the players who most help their teams win, based on box score statistics.

What is Box-Toppers?

Top 10 players

Here are the top 10 players in 2025 Box-Toppers points (BTP) earned in the regular season through Sunday, Sept. 28 (final).

	Player	Pos	Team	BTP
1	Tarik Skubal	pi sp	Tigers	22.1
2	Paul Skenes	pi sp	Pirates	21.1
3	Zack Wheeler	pi sp	Phillies	20.1
4	Garrett Crochet	pi sp	Red Sox	19.8
5	Bryan Woo	pi sp	Mariners	18.0
6	Nick Pivetta	pi sp	Padres	17.7
7	Yoshinobu Yamamoto	pi sp	Dodgers	17.7
8	Jesús Luzardo	pi sp	Phillies	17.4
9	Luis Castillo	pi sp	Mariners	16.1
10	Ranger Suárez	pi sp	Phillies	15.8

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All-time leaders

Here are Box-Toppers top 10 players since record keeping began in 1995:

	Player	Pos	Team	BTP
1	Randy Johnson	pi sp	Retired	282.5
2	Clayton Kershaw	pi sp	Retired	280.8
3	Max Scherzer	pi sp	Blue Jays	256.7
4	Justin Verlander	pi sp	Tigers	250.0
5	Pedro Martinez	pi sp	Retired	244.8
6	Zack Greinke	pi sp	Free agent	224.5
7	Albert Pujols	1b	Retired	207.8
8	CC Sabathia	pi sp	Retired	203.4
9	Curt Schilling	pi sp	Retired	194.1
10	Alex Rodriguez	3b	Retired	187.0

BTP: Box-Toppers points

Winning is the most important thing in baseball. But which player contributed most to that win? While “the win” is a traditional stat, it only applies to pitchers—and even then, it often goes to the pitcher who happened to be in the game when the lead changed, rather than the one most responsible for the victory.

Box-Toppers provides a metric to identify the true “Player of the Game” (pitcher or batter). Using a simple formula based on standard box score stats, we award 1.0 Box-Toppers point to the top player in every MLB game.

How it Works

Player of the Game: 1.0 point per win.
Bonus Points: Players can earn extra credit for being the overall "Player of the Day" or the top player (or top batter) in their league for that day.
Tracking Excellence: As the season progresses, these totals allow us to rank the best players by team, position, or league.

For example, in 2025, Tigers pitcher Tarik Skubal led all players with 22.1 Box-Toppers points. He earned these by being named Player of the Game in 16 Tigers victories. In five of those games, he earned an additional 1.0 bonus point as the overall Player of the Day; in three others, he earned 0.7 bonus points as the American League Player of the Day.

Skubal takes the mound Thursday as the Tigers’ Opening Day starter against the Padres.

Legacy and Coverage

Box-Toppers tracking began in 1995. Since then, the career leader remains Randy Johnson, who retired in 2009 with 282.5 career points.

This is the 14th season for Box-Toppers.com. Throughout 2026, look for:career leader

Daily Updates: Each game’s Player of the Game and the top Player of the Day.
Weekly Rankings: Starting a few weeks into the season, we’ll post overall leaders and team standings (usually on Fridays).
Social Media: Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook, and Twitter (X) for real-time updates and historical comparisons.

You can also subscribe to the Box-Toppers Email Newsletter or our RSS feed to never miss a post.

Help us stay accurate! Spot a mistake? Contact Box-Toppers here so we can fix it.

A Box-Toppers look at each team’s opening day pitchers

All 30 teams open their seasons over three days—Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Here is each team’s opening day starter and the pitching matchups for each team’s first game of the season. 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 2026 (’26), last year and this year (’25-26), over six years (’21-26), and their career point total.
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Game	Wednesday’s starters	’26	’25‑26	’21‑26	Career
NYY	Fried, Max 4011	0.0	14.4	64.6	81.3
SF	Webb, Logan 4258	0.0	9.0	57.6	60.3
Game	Thursday’s starters	’26	’25‑26	’21‑26	Career
PIT	Skenes, Paul 5005	0.0	21.1	34.1	34.1
NYM	Peralta, Freddy 3965	0.0	14.7	65.9	84.6
CHW	Smith, Shane 5158	0.0	7.0	7.0	7.0
MIL	Misiorowski, Jacob 5200	0.0	6.0	6.0	6.0
WSH	Cavalli, Cade 5244	0.0	2.0	2.0	2.0
CHC	Boyd, Matthew 3550	0.0	10.7	15.7	42.5
MIN	Ryan, Joe 4539	0.0	11.7	47.5	47.5
BAL	Rogers, Trevor 4311	0.0	11.7	26.7	27.7
BOS	Crochet, Garrett 4434	0.0	19.8	31.5	31.5
CIN	Abbott, Andrew 4839	0.0	10.7	26.7	26.7
LAA	Soriano, Jose 4884	0.0	12.7	16.7	16.7
HOU	Brown, Hunter 4729	0.0	13.4	36.5	36.5
DET	Skubal, Tarik 4414	0.0	22.1	73.3	73.3
SD	Pivetta, Nick 3825	0.0	17.7	49.1	71.8
TEX	Eovaldi, Nathan 2928	0.0	14.4	57.2	96.7
PHI	Sanchez, Cristopher 4850	0.0	15.4	30.8	30.8
TB	Rasmussen, Drew 4547	0.0	9.7	31.2	31.2
STL	Liberatore, Matthew 4662	0.0	6.0	13.0	13.0
ARI	Gallen, Zac 4171	0.0	12.7	64.5	76.2
LAD	Yamamoto, Yoshinobu 4964	0.0	17.7	24.1	24.1
CLE	Bibee, Tanner 4792	0.0	7.0	29.7	29.7
SEA	Gilbert, Logan 4439	0.0	13.1	60.6	60.6
Game	Friday’s starters	’26	’25‑26	’21‑26	Career
ATH	Severino, Luis 3567	0.0	4.0	23.1	68.9
TOR	Gausman, Kevin 3191	0.0	14.1	69.2	112.2
COL	Freeland, Kyle 3763	0.0	4.0	24.7	45.1
MIA	Alcantara, Sandy 4061	0.0	8.0	45.8	55.2
KC	Ragans, Cole 4889	0.0	7.0	23.4	23.4
ATL	Sale, Chris 2806	0.0	11.4	41.2	183.8

Starters subject to change.
* Player has yet to earn any career Box-Toppers points.
What are those numbers after players' names?
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