A year after getting benched, Cincinnati’s first baseman is launching balls like never before. But his late-career turnaround is about more than just letting it rip.
Why is Joey Votto here? For a long time, when he dug into the left-handed batter’s box, the answer was simple: He wanted to be perfect.
And for a long time, he just about was. He led the league in on-base percentage seven times in his first 10 full seasons. From 2010 through ’14, Votto infield pop-ups were rarer than perfect games. All that precision has made for a very valuable hitter: Since the Reds’ first baseman debuted in ’07, only Mike Trout and Robinson Canó have accrued more WAR.