Joey Votto Has Finally Decided to Pull the Ball
Joey Votto is a 37 year old Canadian Man.
He is also a 6x All Star, Gold Glover, Former MVP, frequent subject of OTBB posts, and owner of a career .302 Batting Average. He’s one of the most accomplished players to ever don a Red’s uniform. At 37, if he began to trail off and sail into the sunset, as his 2019 and 2020 season’s implied, he’d be a slam dunk Reds’ Hall of Famer anyway as well as an interesting Hall of Fame candidate. However, after 2 down years by his standards (he had a 101 and 114 WRC+ in the last two years, his career average is 149 WRC+) he looks like a different hitter at the plate and has been hitting the ball hard as ever.
At 37 years old, Votto is hitting the ball 2+ mph harder than he has in the last 6 years. I apologize to any 37 year old that’s reading this and thinks I’m singling them out, 35+ is old in professional sports unless you’re an NFL quarterback. What Votto has done through this small sample size this year would be phenomenal even for a player in his prime. Even more so that most 37 year old men are tending to a grill or children on July 4th weekend not 95 MPH fastballs.
Without further Votto appreciation, here’s a table of his Statcast metrics from the last 3 years.
| Joey Votto | WRC+ | Avg EV | Max EV | Hard Hit % | xBA | xSLG | Barrel % | Chase Rate |
| 2019 | 101 | 41 | 67 | 44 | 47 | 48 | 40 | 96 |
| 2020 | 114 | 26 | 92 | 32 | 55 | 76 | 58 | 94 |
| 2021 | 110 | 92 | 91 | 87 | 83 | 91 | 86 | 81 |
As you can see, 2019 Votto looked to be about done. It’s a testament to his ability as a hitter that a 101 WRC+, or 1% better than the league average, meant he was done as a hitter. However it is the lowest he’s ever hit since debuting in the MLB in 2007. His lowest WRC+ before 2019 was a 124 WRC+ in 2008, his sophomore year in the MLB. Coupled with a career high (at that time) strikeout rate of 20.2% and the remaining 3 years of his 10 Year, $225 Million deal looked like they’d be a sunk cost. But after 2019, Votto changed.
Whether he be ego or simply frustration Votto was motivated in 2020. The Reds overhauled the lineup, signing Nick Castellanos, Mike Moustakas and imported Shogo Akiyama from Japan. Votto even showed up to Spring Training early for the first time in his 13 seasons. He knew he needed to change, and he frequently talked about looking through his statcast data and spray charts for adjustments to be made. And he did so with a very simple tweak, he made a conscious decision to pull the ball.
| WRC+ | Pull% | Straight% | Oppo% | |
| 2019 | 101 | 35.3 | 39.5 | 25.2 |
| 2020 | 114 | 40.6 | 35 | 24.5 |
| 2021 | 110 | 43.3 | 35.8 | 20.9 |
Votto has long been seen as a “pure hitter” with enough power to hit the ball to all fields to have success, and his career 149 WRC+ backs up that statement. However, pitching and defense has gotten demonstrably better since Votto’s prime and coupled with declining power and reflexes, some of those hits were being erased and some of those fly balls to the opposite field were dying on the warning track.
2021 is the highest Pull % of Voto’s career, as well as the year where he has the highest Avg. Exit Velocity of his career (by two!), 92.6MPH. Which happens to be in the top 8% of the league. He also has the highest Hard Hit % of his career at 49.3%. Votto’s decision to change as a hitter has paid off according to the Statcast data.
So with all that said, one would expect Votto to have a monstrous batting line and be leading the Reds to first place in the NL Central right?
Through 76 games, Votto is the 2nd best left handed hitter on his team, and the 5th best hitter on the Reds by WRC+. As of this writing, he has an OPS of .786. He’s been good, but not great, but his underlying metrics say he’s been at minimum an 85th Percentile hitter.
| Expected Stats | xBA | xSLG | wOBA | xWOBA |
| 2019 | .254 | .437 | .332 | .342 |
| 2020 | .253 | .478 | .347 | .369 |
| 2021 | .282 | .548* | .345 | .383 |
*=Top 9% of the league
So Evan you just showed us even more stats, yet Votto still is severely underperforming: Votto’s Expected OPS is .931, 145 points more than his line today.
Where’s the disconnect?
Votto’s ground ball rate is a good place to start.
A 45% ground ball rate and the 424th Sprint Speed in MLB don’t mesh quite well. Factor that in with a 23.2% K Rate (a career high yet still above league average) and we start to see some chinks in Votto’s armor. And then there’s the shift, which opposing teams have employed 71.9% of the time against Votto, almost double from 2019 but slightly less than 2020’s high water mark of 78.7%. Against the shift Votto has a .336 wOBA, without it he has a .353 wOBA, which is closer to what is expected from his underlying metrics.
He’s also been almost completely neutralized by left-handed pitchers, he has a .574 OPS (worst of his career by almost .100 points) against them compared to an .893 Ops against Right Handed pitchers. His career OPS against Lefties is .860(!), so one could say that he’s due, although his OPS against lefties is .620 since 2019, so it’s not guaranteed. However, at this point none of these factors are immensely detracting by themselves.
Regardless of these factors and potential red flags, Votto is still hitting for a 110 WRC+ as of this writing, which in my eyes, paints this as his offensive floor, provided he continues his current Statcast trends. In June after returning from a broken thumb he had an OPS of .889. Keep pulling the ball Joey, the Reds’ playoff hopes depend on it.
