The Player of the Game stat is one unique thing about BurningRiverBaseball.com. It is a fluid number that includes hitting, pitching, defense and base running that I created in 2007. The stat is found by attributing points to every event on the baseball field (such as a single is worth 0.33), then adding them together. Each season, slight changes are made to these point totals, but the overall theory has always been the same and similarly to WAR, it attempts to compare all players, no matter their position.
While this number ultimately tells us things we already know, like that Michael Brantley was the Indians top hitter and Corey Kluber the top pitcher this season, it makes these ideas more quantifiable. Below is the final tallies for every player who got onto the field for the Indians in the 2014 season. The total is initially split into separate columns of offensive production, pitching and defense. After the total score for the season, which is in blue, each players average per game and best single game score of the season is noted.
| Player | O | P | D | Total | AVG | Game |
| Michael Brantley | 270.9 | 0.0 | 2.3 | 273.2 | 1.75 | 7.82 |
| Carlos Santana | 203.8 | 0.0 | -8.1 | 195.3 | 1.29 | 9.58 |
| Yan Gomes | 179.4 | 0.0 | -7.8 | 171.6 | 1.27 | 8.32 |
| Corey Kluber | 0.0 | 157.3 | -2.1 | 155.2 | 4.31 | 11.94 |
| Lonnie Chisenhall | 160.2 | 0.0 | -8.8 | 151.3 | 1.07 | 17.94 |
| David Murphy | 132.1 | 0.0 | -0.7 | 131.5 | 1.03 | 10.21 |
| Jason Kipnis | 129.4 | 0.0 | -0.8 | 128.6 | 1.00 | 8.70 |
| Asdrubal Cabrera | 117.0 | 0.0 | -10.6 | 106.5 | 1.10 | 7.97 |
| Michael Bourn | 105.9 | 0.0 | -0.6 | 105.4 | 0.99 | 5.35 |
| Mike Aviles | 93.3 | 0.0 | -2.9 | 90.3 | 0.80 | 7.65 |
| Carlos Carrasco | -0.2 | 88.5 | 0.1 | 88.4 | 2.21 | 12.60 |
| Nick Swisher | 89.2 | 0.0 | -5.6 | 83.6 | 0.86 | 6.93 |
| Cody Allen | 0.0 | 72.9 | -2.5 | 70.5 | 0.93 | 4.09 |
| Jose Ramirez | 58.3 | 0.0 | -1.0 | 57.4 | 0.86 | 5.35 |
| Scott Atchison | 0.0 | 50.7 | -0.5 | 50.2 | 0.72 | 3.46 |
| Bryan Shaw | 0.0 | 48.8 | -2.9 | 45.9 | 0.57 | 4.27 |
| Ryan Raburn | 45.6 | 0.0 | -1.4 | 44.2 | 0.60 | 4.32 |
| T.J. House | -0.2 | 34.3 | 1.8 | 35.9 | 1.89 | 9.49 |
| Trevor Bauer | -0.1 | 37.3 | -2.8 | 34.4 | 1.32 | 8.01 |
| Danny Salazar | -0.4 | 33.0 | -0.4 | 32.3 | 1.61 | 10.42 |
| Marc Rzepczynski | 0.0 | 28.8 | -0.5 | 28.3 | 0.39 | 3.19 |
| Kyle Crockett | 0.0 | 27.5 | -0.1 | 27.4 | 0.62 | 2.77 |
| Zach Walters | 26.9 | 0.0 | 0.3 | 27.1 | 0.90 | 5.65 |
| Chris Dickerson | 21.1 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 21.2 | 0.53 | 6.65 |
| John Axford | 0.0 | 21.0 | -1.6 | 19.5 | 0.40 | 2.21 |
| Nyjer Morgan | 18.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 18.8 | 1.25 | 7.00 |
| Nick Hagadone | 0.0 | 17.0 | 0.5 | 17.5 | 0.51 | 3.36 |
| Roberto Perez | 16.8 | 0.0 | -0.3 | 16.6 | 0.57 | 5.63 |
| Josh Outman | 0.0 | 12.1 | -0.3 | 11.8 | 0.38 | 3.50 |
| George Kottaras | 11.9 | 0.0 | -0.3 | 11.7 | 1.17 | 6.55 |
| Jason Giambi | 9.3 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 9.3 | 0.36 | 5.75 |
| C.C. Lee | 0.0 | 9.9 | -0.8 | 9.1 | 0.25 | 2.97 |
| Tyler Holt | 7.3 | 0.0 | 0.9 | 8.2 | 0.23 | 3.93 |
| Zach McAllister | 0.1 | 7.8 | -2.6 | 5.3 | 0.24 | 8.78 |
| Josh Tomlin | 0.0 | 9.8 | -4.6 | 5.1 | 0.20 | 12.70 |
| Jesus Aguilar | 4.2 | 0.0 | -1.8 | 2.4 | 0.13 | 2.61 |
| Justin Sellers | 1.2 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.2 | 0.07 | 1.03 |
| Justin Masterson | -0.2 | 1.0 | -0.9 | -0.2 | -0.01 | 9.53 |
| J.B. Shuck | -0.2 | 0.0 | 0.0 | -0.2 | -0.01 | 0.78 |
| Chris Gimenez | -0.9 | 0.0 | -0.2 | -1.1 | -0.18 | 0.15 |
| Blake Wood | 0.0 | -1.0 | -0.2 | -1.2 | -0.17 | 1.73 |
| Vinnie Pestano | 0.0 | 0.1 | -1.4 | -1.3 | -0.10 | 1.62 |
| Elliot Johnson | 0.1 | 0.0 | -1.6 | -1.5 | -0.22 | 1.33 |
| Austin Adams | 0.0 | -3.4 | 0.3 | -3.1 | -0.52 | 1.75 |
| Mark Lowe | 0.0 | -1.2 | -4.0 | -5.2 | -0.74 | 1.37 |
| Bryan Price | 0.0 | -11.0 | 0.0 | -11.0 | -3.66 | -2.65 |
Because the POG stat is cumulative and allows negative scores, one great game can be completely cancelled out by a single poor game. This is why multiple starting pitchers who started more than 15 games have total season scores below their highest game. In general comparing pitchers to hitters is the hardest part of analyzing baseball stats. The original purpose of the stat was to find out who was the best player in each individual game and for this, it works perfectly when comparing the two. However, when expanded to a full season, the lack of games played by pitchers keeps their totals low. In order to find out who is the best overall, some combination of the total and average needs to be used, as is done in my Player Power Rankings.
Of particular note are a couple of extremes. Lonnie Chisenhall’s amazing game with three home runs and 9 RBI against Texas lead to the highest single game total of the season of 17.9 a better score than 21 of the 46 players used scored for the entire season. On the other side of the spectrum, Bryan Price’s best game of the season was a -2.65 against the Tigers. This is particularly impressive as he pitched in three games.
| Player | Total |
| Kluber | 18 |
| Brantley | 17 |
| Santana | 12 |
| Carrasco | 9 |
| Gomes | 9 |
| Cabrera | 8 |
| Murphy | 7 |
| Swisher | 7 |
| Bourn | 6 |
| Chisenhall | 6 |
| House | 6 |
| Kipnis | 6 |
| Salazar | 6 |
| Aviles | 5 |
| Masterson | 5 |
| McAllister | 5 |
| Bauer | 5 |
Of course, the ultimate purpose of the scoring system was to find the best player in every game. This year, 31 different players won the award with a distribution of 69 pitchers and 93 hitters over the 162 games. This distribution ultimately showed the extreme depletion of the offense towards the end of the season. During the first 116 games of the year, a hitter won the award 77 times (66% of the time), but during the final 46, pitchers won 65% of the time (30 total). This included a run starting on August 9th where seven consecutive starting pitchers won with three other streaks of at least three straight won by the starter. There was another stretch starting on September 15th and running through the end of the season where a pitcher won nine of the final 13 games of the year.
To the right is the list of each player who won at least five awards on the season. In general, the player who wins Player of the Game is the best of the best, as Kluber was almost every time he pitched, but there are some times when no one really deserves it. In these games, the Player of the Game can be vultured, just like a win late in a tie game. Unlike those often undeserved wins, the winner of the Player of the Game is always the best player of that particular game. It is in these games that relievers and utility men can snare a few as happened with the 13 players who won three or fewer times.
In addition, winning the Player of the Game can be a clutch thing. If you hit a three run home run in a 10 run game or behind a pitcher throwing a shut out, it could be ignored, but if you hit a solo home run in a low scoring affair, it is ultimately more important. This explains Nick Swisher’s seven awards more than anything else. It is also the reason Carrasco was able to tally nine on the season, despite winning just a single POG prior to game 118. Getting hot when he needed to, Carrasco received very little run support and usually didn’t need it when shredding lineups starting in August.
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