Joey Votto Thought He'd Be In The Conversation For Best Player In The Game Every Year, But Mike Trout 'Fucked That Up For Everybody'
This is going to get taken out of context almost immediately, so yes, Joey Votto was joking. But the main reason why I wanted to write about this wasn’t to sing the praises of Mike Trout. Everybody has already done that a million times, myself included. The reason why I wanted to hit on this was because, in my first full year of covering MLB, the only time I really got the “why aren’t you covering this” kind of complaints were about Joey Votto. And honestly, the complaints were very much valid.
First of all, I’m being too vague here. What’s the story with Votto that wasn’t being talked about? The story is that this motherfucker hit over .400 in the second half. After the All Star break, Votto played in 72 of the Reds’ 73 games, and he hit .408 with a 1.158 OPS, both of which led the majors. You know what the next highest qualified batting average in the second half was? Yadier Molina, .365. Votto was more than 40 points better than the next best guy in the MLB in the second half in terms of batting average. He was also 91 points better than Freddie Freeman, who had the second highest OPS in the majors in the second half.
And I know that batting average is getting to be more and more of an outdated stat, and I’m with you. I value OPS and on-base percentage more, but when a guy hits .400, you pay attention, and that’s what Votto did for the entire second half of the season. Put it this way — if Votto did this in the first half of the season, it would’ve been a HUGE story. The highest batting average at the All Star break was Daniel Murphy, who was hitting .348 with a .985 OPS. The highest OPS in the first half was 1.107 by David Ortiz. Votto had better marks than both of them in the second half. Those are certainly great marks for Murphy and Ortiz for the first half, but they really weren’t even in the same neighborhood as what Votto did in the second half. Yet, nobody (I’m guilty of this, too) was talking about it.
It’s obviously because the Reds were brutal this year, and nobody was really paying attention to that team at all, but Votto deserved some love for what he did after the All Star break. And I’m sure Votto’s comment was one of those, “I’m joking, but not really” kind of comments, but it’s kind of true. When you think about the best players in the game today, does Votto’s name ever really come up? I don’t think so.
Should it? The guy’s been in the big leagues for a decade, and he’s hitting .313 with a .961 OPS for his career, while leading the league in on-base percentage in five of those ten seasons. There’s no way that you can spin it and make a case that he’s the best player in the game — he’s not — but he’s definitely one of the best. Next time you see Joey Votto, I want you to give him a hug and tell him that you’re sorry for not appreciating him more.