It was 20 years ago in Dayton, Ohio where a no-name, low-level minor league prospect in the Cincinnati Reds organization sat in his hotel rooms every off day watching every at bat taken from Todd Helton and Barry Bonds, the two players he considered to be the finest left-handed hitters he’d seen, studying their approaches against each individual pitcher. For first base prospect Joey Votto, rolling out of bed and getting on-base at a .400 clip was the reputation he’d retire with after 17 years in the Major Leagues, but before he studied the approach of each hitter, it wasn’t as easy. Despite the fanfare of being a second-round pick in the 2002 MLB draft, Votto had been hitting just .231 with a .635 OPS in Dayton the previous season. Yet, as he studied different approaches of different acclaimed hitters, he found his philosophical approach changing.
For example, one of Votto’s biggest strengths as a hitter was viewed as flaws from coaches, and it’s a technique taken directly from the Rockies first baseman. According to former teammate Chris Dickerson during a conversation with The Athletic, Votto noticed that Helton’s way of spoiling pitches would be to deliver the worst swing possible while still fouling it off until he got a pitch he liked. As frustrating as it’d be to Votto’s coaches for not giving his A-swings every time, it’d be even more frustrating to the opposing pitcher that would continue to throw great pitches until he made a mistake, while also being unaware as to whether or not he has Votto in a precarious situation within the at-bat since Votto’s swings could turn on a dime. Theoretically, the idea of intentionally swinging the bat in a way that one knows cannot deliver a base hit is to give up on the at bat, however, a good swing on a bad pitch made it much more likely to pop it up on the infield. The approach is designed to force the pitcher into either walking the hitter or giving the hitter the pitch he’s most likely to do damage on.
For Votto, the approach worked at an alarmingly high rate. Not only did he breakout the next year in Dayton to a .302/.419/.486 slash and ride the approach all the way to Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, but Joey became a statistical anomaly unlike anything seen before and unlike anything we’ll likely ever see again. Keeping photos of both Helton and Bonds alongside former Boston great Ted Williams in his locker every day in his MLB career to remind him of their approaches, Votto mashed Major League pitching in a rather unique way. Votto, remarkably, didn’t pop up a single pitch to the pull side until 2019, twelve years after his Major League debut. While league-wide popup rate stands anywhere from 5.5-8.5% on batted balls in any given year, Votto’s career percentage of popups on balls put in play ends at just 0.67%, with 38 popups across 5.741 plate appearances that resulted in balls-in-play, refraining from automatic outs on the infield at what’s likely the highest of rates in MLB history among qualified hitters. The approach also led to Votto averaging over 100 walks a year, solidifying a more-liberal, forward-thinking offensive mindset that baseball purists hadn’t widely accepted yet, but for Votto, allowed him a career where he either got on-base or made the best possible contact in hopes of getting on-base possible. The movement of getting on-base started a groundswell in baseball tradition the year Votto was drafted when Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics introduced the concept of Moneyball, later being made into a film where Beane would be portrayed by Fight Club star Brad Pitt. However, the mindset wasn’t yet taught or ingrained to hitters, including the seven that the A’s drafted ahead of Votto in the 2002 draft.
Votto signaled his retirement in an era of three-true-outcome prominence: the idea that at bats are most likely to end in one of three outcomes that cannot harm a rally in the way a double play or plays of that ilk may (homerun, walk, strikeout), so to maximize potential opportunities for homeruns and walks, strikeouts are a necessity. The analytically driven philosophy that uses launch angle to make the best contact with the baseball while focusing on walks, creating an environment where the three-true-outcomes become truly rampant was put forward in the book The Science of Hitting, published in 1968 by author Ted Williams. Yes, that same Ted Williams, the last player in the Majors to bat .400 in a single-season.
So far in 2024, MLB has an average K-percentage of 22.4%, an average walk percentage of 8.2%, and an average HR-rate of 3.1%. The three-true-outcomes are happening at a 33.7% rate, or over a third of plate appearances taken by each hitter. The number is down across the board this year by a couple percentage points, with the rates being anywhere from 35-40% at the start of the decade. The rates, however, are up from previous years at a much higher level. For example, the rate in 2010 was approximately 27%, creating a large discrepancy in the modern game from even recent areas with liberal approaches offensively. For comparison’s sake, 2010 was the year that Votto broke out to win the NL MVP, slashing .324/.424/.600, leading the league in both OBP and SLG, while hammering 37 homeruns and 36 doubles. IN a year where the league-average three-true-outcome rate sat at 27%, Votto had 253 TTO’s in 648 plate appearances, or, roughly 40% of his trips to the plate.
As Votto career progressed in baseball, the pitching evolved. As pitchers became filthier than ever while also pitching fewer innings than ever, batters had to adjust on the fly to different angles and arms throwing different pitches four or five times a game as opposed to only two times a game. This forced offenses to require an A-swing and hope to run into one versus manufacturing outsides in more-old school kind of ways, forcing front offices to preach the philosophy that worked so well for Ted Williams back in the 1950s. Williams had a 33.1% TTO-rate in a time where the league-average TTO rate sat at 20.4%, leading him to astounding results. Williams, of course, was a lifetime .344 hitter with 521 homeruns and the highest on-base percentage in MLB history (.482). Votto obviously didn’t see that level of success, but also had to deal with better stuff, far more relievers, a longer schedule, a more-advanced travel itinerary, among other major differences in the game. Yet, he did bring it to prominence in the modern game, seeing massive success with the approach before everybody else followed suit organizationally.
It’s easy to see that Joey Votto is a Hall of Famer. Votto was 44% better on average than the average hitter over the course of his career, launched 356 Major League homers, collected over 2,000 hits and had a robust .294/.409/.511, finishing just .06 points away on average from a .300/.400/.500 career-line, something less than thirty MLB players have retired with ever. Yet, he also ticks a lot of boxes that voters like: excellent character, one team the entire duration of his Major League career, an MVP award, as well as having led the league multiple times in major categories.
Yet, what isn’t often discussed when discussing Votto is the nature of which his numbers were accrued. Very few players become a model the entirety of Major League baseball molds their players in. While the approach from Teddy Ballgame was established nearly sixty years ago, Votto was the first to implement it. Not only did Votto implement it, he succeeded at the approach at a higher level than other MLB hitters because he combined it with the philosophy a different, more recent Hall of Famer in Todd Helton. The TTO approach is great in theory for making the best contact possible, but in practice, it’s almost impossible to make as efficient contact as Votto did, and he did it because he used Helton’s real-time at-bat approach.
To Joey Bangs, congratulations on a stellar Major League career that we’ll be celebrating five years from now in upstate New York.
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