TORONTO — Now that Joey Votto's Major League Baseball career is officially over, there's only one question remaining: will he become the third Canadian enshrined in Baseball's Hall of Fame?
Although there's no doubt that the 2010 National League MVP and six-time all-star had an excellent 17-year career with the Cincinnati Reds, he's not as clear cut a choice for Cooperstown as fellow Canadians Ferguson Jenkins and Larry Walker were when they were elected to baseball's most hallowed hall.
There have certainly been well-earned accolades throughout the Toronto native's career, including winning the Lou Marsh Trophy, since renamed the Northern Star Award, as the Canadian athlete of the year in 2010 and 2017. He also won the James "Tip" O'Neill Award, presented to the year's best Canadian baseball player, seven times, second only to Walker's nine.
But gaining entry into Cooperstown is a more exacting process, with players inducted into the Hall of Fame through election by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Players become eligible five years after retirement and are elected if they're named on 75 per cent or more of all ballots cast. A player who is named on fewer than 5 per cent of ballots is dropped from future elections.
Votto finished with a .294 batting average, 2,135 career hits, 356 home runs, and 1,144 runs batted in. His career total of 1,365 walks is the most of any active player in MLB and 34th all time.
From a traditionalist viewpoint, those numbers are not enough to get into the Hall of Fame, falling well short of the benchmarks — 3,000 hits or 500 home runs — that guaranteed enshrinement through the 1970s, '80s, '90s and early 2000s.
But Votto's career began in 2007, four years after Michael Lewis's highly influential book "Moneyball" came out, a tome that helped reshape how baseball executives and fans interpreted statistics. He also rose to prominence as MLB reckoned with the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport, leading to many surefire Hall of Famers like Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro and Roger Clemens to be all but eliminated from consideration.
In that context, Votto is the prototype for the ideal hitter, with a career .409 on-base percentage and a .920 on-base + slugging percentage. Both of those stats are top-five among active players and in the top 55 all-time.
Even more advanced statistics help Votto's case.
Wins Above Replacement measures a player's value in all facets of the game by deciphering how many more wins he's worth than a replacement-level player at his same position. The Toronto native has a 64.5 career WAR, while the average first baseman already in Cooperstown has a 64.8, putting him in line with expectations.
More significantly, his WAR during his seven-year peak was 46.9, well above the 42.0 average held by Hall of Fame first basemen.
JAWS, a statistic that averages a players' career WAR with the WAR of their seven-year peak and therefore rewards consistency, is perhaps Votto's strongest stat. His 55.7 JAWS is safely above the 53.4 average for players in Cooperstown that played the same position.
Although so-called fancy stats would make the strongest case for Votto's enshrinement, there are intangibles that could help bring less analytically inclined voters on his side too.
Playing all 17 seasons of his MLB career in Cincinnati could be seen as a boon, even as his career batting average slid below .300 in his final four injury-marred seasons with the Reds, with Votto hitting .226 in 2020, .266 in 2021, .205 in 2022 and .202 in 2023.
BBWA voters may also give Votto a nudge for always being an interesting, engaging, and sometimes funny interview. Highlights of Votto's antics include his tongue-in-cheek rant at SiriusXM radio personality Chris "Mad Dog" Russo where he defended "small-market, Midwest ballplayers" from Russo's "big city" snobbery.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 22, 2024.
John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press
