August 26, 2016

Low K Votto

Joey Votto talks about reducing his strikeout rate after getting off to a terrible start in 2016. He looked at three great players who got off to bad starts when they were in their 30s, and how they recovered:

“I was striking out a tremendous amount,” he said. “I was striking out far too much and to me that was not going to stand the test of time. Again, I looked at Willie, I looked at Stan and I looked at Derek. Willie and Derek stood out to me the most. Both of them struck out during the first two months almost the same amount they struck out the last four months. That means they struck out so much that they said, ‘OK, I’m not doing that any more’ and their seasons ended up being pretty standard for them. They didn’t speak to me directly, but they spoke to me through their Baseball-Reference page, through their game logs and their game experience. And I’m grateful for that and hope that in the future I get to do that for a younger player.”

AFTER STRIKING OUT 57 times in the first two months, Votto has trimmed his ‘K’s to 50 over the last three months and raised his batting average from .213 to .309. Since June 1, Votto’s on-base average is .505 (best in the majors), raising it from .330 to .433. He is hittring .381 in that span, second only to Houston’s Jose Altuve (.391.)

I hope Votto keeps going in this direction. He owns such a high career BABIP, that if he cuts his strikeouts way down, he has a chance to post an extremely high BA. Cutting down on strikeouts allowed Miguel Cabrera to win a batting title and a triple crown.

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