Joey Votto: Best, Worst, Outliers, and Oddities

Issue #196

Reds 1B Joey Votto, who turned 41 a few days ago, recently announced his retirement from baseball. He was with the Blue Jays organization this year, playing in 31 games in their minor league system—but the Reds is the only team he’s ever played for at the major league level.

From a few interviews I’ve seen, I suspect we’ll see him back in the game at some point in some capacity, perhaps in the broadcast booth or doing analysis/commentary on ESPN, MLB Network, or elsewhere. Or I’m sure he could get into coaching, starting say as a hitting instructor in the minor leagues or Caribbean (hint: he has been studying Spanish lately.)

As I’ve done for a couple of Hall of Famers who passed away in recent years (Gaylord Perry and Brooks Robinson), I decided to do a little digging into Votto’s career numbers. So this is the latest in my player profile series that I’m calling “Best, Worst, Outliers, and Oddities.”

Standard Numbers and Accolades

Before I get to some more unique bits of interest, here are the standard numbers and accolades that reviews of Joey Votto’s playing career usually include:

• Played in the majors for 17 seasons, from 2007-2023, all with the Cincinnati Reds.

• He was NL Rookie of the Year runner-up in 2008 (the winner was Cubs’ Catcher Geovany Soto).

• He was a six-time All-Star, 2010 NL MVP, and 2011 Gold Glove Award winner. He narrowly missed winning a second MVP in 2017 when he tied Giancarlo Stanton with 10 first-place votes but came up short overall (302 vote points to 300).

• He led the NL with 40 doubles in 2011, led the league in walks five times, and OBP seven times.

• Scored 100+ runs five times, hit 30+ HR three times (with three more seasons of 29 HR), and had 100+ RBI three times.

• Career slash line of .294/.409/.511 with a 144 OPS+. For the seasons 2007-2023, Votto’s 144 OPS+ ranks 7th amongst players with 2,000+ plate appearances, behind only Mike Trout, Yordan Alvarez, Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Shohei Ohtani, and David Ortiz.

• During that same span of years he ranks third in total bWAR with 64.5, behind only Trout (85.2) and Mookie Betts (64.8).

• Amongst all players in MLB history who played the majority of their games at 1B, Votto’s 64.5 bWAR ranks 13th behind Lou Gehrig, Albert Pujols, Cap Anson,

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