Roundtable: Is Votto a Hall of Famer?

After a 17-year career, Reds legend Joey Votto announced his retirement on Wednesday night. By some measures, the 2010 National League MVP with a career .409 OBP is a no-doubt Hall of Famer, but he did not come close to any of the traditional benchmarks (3,000 hits or 500 homers) that typically guarantee enshrinement.

We surveyed a panel of MLB.com writers and analysts to give their take on Votto’s Cooperstown case.

Anthony Castrovince
For one, Votto is a legacy player with a franchise that has been in the National League since 1890. He ranks behind only Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and Barry Larkin on the Reds’ franchise leaderboard in position player bWAR (64.5), behind only Joe Morgan in on-base percentage (.409), behind only Rose in doubles (459) and behind only Bench in homers (356).

Then, you have to consider his place within the context of his time. Among those with at least 5,000 plate appearances between 2007-23, Votto’s .920 OPS trails only Mike Trout (.994) and David Ortiz (.937). He was second in runs created (1,502) in that span only to Miguel Cabrera (1,518).

If you’re into storytelling, then you could tell a story about Votto as the archetype of the modern analytically minded player, someone who paid attention and adapted to the advanced numbers far earlier than most and ultimately compelled fans to do the same.

“The way I play,” Votto once told me, “challenges people to think outside the box, and it challenges people to go against their former ideas of what a good player looks like.”

Votto was not a good player but a great one. To me, the question is not whether he is a Hall of Famer; it’s how do we retroactively award him the second career MVP honor he deserved in 2017?!

Mark Feinsand
Votto is a Hall of Famer. No, he didn’t reach the milestones in the counting stats that typically lead players to Cooperstown, but if you watched him play from 2008-18, you know he was one of the game’s premier hitters.

During those 11 seasons, Votto had a .311/.428/.529 slash line (.957 OPS) while averaging 24 home runs, 80 RBIs and 100 walks per season. He was one of the toughest outs in the game; a hitter no pitcher wanted to face.

Votto led the league in on-base percentage seven times during his career. The only players to do so more often? Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby. Pretty good company.

With six All-Star appearances, the 2010 NL MVP Award and five other top-10 MVP finishes, Votto was among the elite players in the game for more than a decade.

Even as his numbers declined late in his career, Votto finished with a .294/.409/.511 slash line (.920 OPS), 356 homers and 1,144 RBIs. His 64.5 bWAR is higher than many Hall of Famers including Willie McCovey, Dave Winfield, Todd Helton, Mike Piazza and Joe Mauer.

Great career. Great player. And it will be my great pleasure to vote for him for the Hall in five years.

Sarah Langs
Votto was an on-base machine. He led his league in OBP seven times. The only players to do so more in MLB history are Ted Williams (12), Barry Bonds (10), Babe Ruth (10) and Rogers Hornsby (nine).

Votto’s peak seven-year WAR was 46.9. That ranks ninth all-time among first basemen, trailing only seven players already in the Hall of Fame (Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Jeff Bagwell, Johnny Mize, Dan Brouthers, Roger Connor, George Sisler), and Albert Pujols, who will be.

His JAWS score, Jay Jaffe’s WAR-based Hall of Fame metric, puts him in similar Cooperstown company.

There aren’t bonus points for being an off-the-field, intangibles, personality HOFer, but Votto checks every box there, too. His love of and approach to the game is one of the many reasons baseball is the best.

Will Leitch
Baseball is, at its core, a simple sport. There is a guy, standing on a hump of dirt in the middle of a field, with a ball that he is trying to throw past another guy, who is standing in a little box (roughly!) 60 feet away. The guy in the box is trying to get on base. The guy on the hump of dirt is trying to stop him. There are, obviously, many, many complications that are going to spring up around this elemental battle. But this is what it’s really about. The guy gets on base and thus wins the battle, or he doesn’t.

There is no one in the past two decades of baseball -- two decades in which it became obvious, and universally accepted, that in the end there was nothing more important than that guy’s ability to get on base -- who was better at winning this elemental battle than Votto. He did a lot of things well as a player, but there was nothing he was better at, and better than anybody else, than getting on base and winning that battle. He led his league in OBP seven times, and every Votto at-bat must have been absolute torture for every pitcher who faced him. He understood the intricacies of that battle -- that battle that is the foundation of everything that happens in a baseball game -- better than anyone else. It was harder to get Votto out than anybody else. He was the best in baseball at the most important part of baseball. What could possibly be more deserving of the game’s highest honor?

Mike Petriello
Perhaps we could agree as a baseball community to ignore Votto’s final two injury-plagued seasons with the Reds, which dragged him slightly below a milestone it seemed all but certain he’d reach: the magical .300/.400/.500 career, which only 18 players (minimum 7,000 plate appearances) have managed. Seventeen of those are Hall of Famers, and Manny Ramirez would be as well if he’d made some different choices.

On the other hand, forget batting average. Replace the .300 average with 300 homers to go with the .400 OBP and .500 slugging percentage. Only 19 players, Votto included, have done that. All but three of the other 18 are in the Hall -- with Barry Bonds and Lance Berkman joining Ramirez.

So is Votto getting in? Absolutely, especially because the march of history is on his side, as his elite on-base skills (six 100-walk seasons) are more valued now than his relatively unremarkable RBI totals (three 100-RBI seasons) might have been in the past; because his WAR totals put him among the best first basemen of the divisional era; because of his general reputation as a baseball scientist and beloved teammate; because, again, it’s really, really hard to get to those combinations of on-base and power.

Votto was ejected from his final Major League plate appearance for arguing balls and strikes. He was, of course, absolutely correct. A perfect farewell to a most unexpected all-time legend -- and one who should be preparing for a first-ballot speech in Cooperstown, class of 2029.

Manny Randhawa
Traditional milestones like 3,000 hits or 500 homers are nice, but in my opinion, they shouldn’t be prerequisites for Hall of Fame election. Votto is one of just 34 players in AL/NL history to produce a career OPS+ of 144 or better (minimum 7,500 plate appearances). That ranks him ahead of Hall of Famers like Eddie Mathews, Harmon Killebrew, Mike Piazza, David Ortiz, Chipper Jones and Duke Snider.

According to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS method of evaluating Hall of Fame worthiness, Votto’s career bWAR (64.5) is nearly identical to the average Hall of Fame first baseman (64.8), and his seven-year peak WAR (46.9), JAWS (55.7) and bWAR per 162 games (5.1) are all higher than the average Hall of Fame first baseman.

As far as accolades go, he was the 2010 NL MVP, a six-time All-Star and won an NL Gold Glove Award at first. And, as Mr. Castrovince notes above, Votto could very well have been the 2017 NL MVP, too (Giancarlo Stanton’s 59 homers that year do look pretty good on a stat line).

Votto was also the face of a franchise during his 17-year career with the Reds. He never appeared in a Major League game for any other club. There’s certainly something to be said for that.

In sum: Yes, Votto is a Hall of Famer.

Mark Sheldon
I had the good fortune of witnessing and covering the Reds for Votto's entire 17-season career. Yes, he deserves to be a Hall of Famer in my book. Understanding that he lacks the traditional plateaus of 500 homers and 3,000 hits and never played in a World Series, not to mention never advanced in a postseason round, I think the measure of his greatness is this: Was he one of the best players of his era? No doubt. Was he a generational player for his franchise? Indeed. His offensive achievements for the oldest franchise in professional baseball have his name listed among all-time greats like Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan -- all Hall of Famers -- as well as Pete Rose.

Amazingly, Votto was still doing big things later in his career. At 33 in 2017, a year he played in all 162 games, he came within just two points of winning a second NL MVP Award. In his age-37 season in 2021, he hit a home run in seven consecutive games, one shy of tying the Major League record.

Votto was one of the smartest players in the game and understood there were other ways to help his team win -- simply by getting on base. He goes down as one of the best to ever do that. And when a game was on the line for the Reds during his prime, there was no one fans wanted to see in the batter's box more than Votto.

Andrew Simon
When I think about Votto and the Hall, one other name that comes to mind immediately is someone who just entered Cooperstown: Adrian Beltré. That’s because, aside from being tremendous baseball players, both were singular baseball players. More than that, they were singular baseball characters. That didn’t necessarily come out early in their careers, but it did as they matured, established themselves and grew more comfortable sharing themselves with the world.

These were hard-nosed competitors, to be sure. But they also had fun, on and off the field, and weren’t afraid to be a little quirky. There was Beltré going ballistic when his head was touched, and moving the on-deck circle and feuding with frenemy Félix Hernández. There was Votto dressing as a Canadian Mountie and buying his teammate a donkey and being funny on social media.

You don’t get into the Hall just for being entertaining, but it certainly can’t hurt. And it’s not as if Votto, like Beltré, doesn’t have plenty of on-field accolades. The biggest difference between them, though, comes down to this number: 3,384. That’s how many more plate appearances Beltré got, thanks to arriving in the Majors four years younger and staying much healthier than Votto. All those trips to the plate helped Beltré crack 3,000 hits, 600 doubles and 450 homers, and he cruised into Cooperstown on the first ballot.

Votto does not have the luxury of such appealing counting stats, but for me, his peak is more than enough to push him over the line. For 10 seasons from 2009-18, Votto hit .312/.434/.532 with a 159 OPS+, leading the NL in OBP seven times. Simply put, he’s one of the top few hitters of his generation.