Joey Votto Rested and Ready to Rock

Joey Votto needed a break from the worst season of his career.

"I had a lot of downtime,” Votto said..  I did a lot of training but no baseball stuff. I feel good and ready to go.”

The 36-year old decided to pace himself and take a mental break from the game and come into the season refreshed and ready to go.  The Reds brought the position players in closer to the opening of the Cactus League games.  It was the approached Votto used to ramp up for the season.

"I've had off seasons before where I didn't do any baseball stuff and just conditioned.  I needed to just get away from baseball stuff for awhile," Votto said.

Votto has been through lean times and good times with the Reds.  As a youthful player himself, he broke into the big leagues himself in 2007 with 24 games in which he showed promise, hitting .321.  The next season, he was a regular.  By 2010 he was an MVP of the National League Central division champion.

Votto is a six-time NL All-Star, a Sporting News NL All-Star and the only Reds’ first baseman ever to win a Rawlings Gold Glove Award. He received NL Most Valuable Player Award votes seven times in the 10 seasons, six times finished among the Top 10 and three times finished
among the Top 3.

The longest tenured current Reds player, who signed a 10-year contract through the 2023 season, he was a star player on a team that has suffered six losing seasons as they tried to rebuild.  Votto was not himself last season. His batting average was 40 points below his career average.  He hit just 15 home runs and walked just 76 times, the only time he has been below 100 walks in a season where he didn’t spend significant time on the injured list.

"Last year was the worst season of my career,” Votto said. “I played poorly and I don't want to rehash that.”

He decided to come to Arizona earlier than the appointed time.  He has been in and our of camp but didn’t work out a lot.

“I wanted to get acclimated to Arizona,” Votto said. “I was going to go on a trip I was going to go on a trip before I got here. But I decided against it because I didn’t want to deal with too much jet lag. I will have to save that for after we win the World Series”

Even though he was cleansing his mind from baseball.  He was aware of the many off season moves the front office was making.

"I followed the moves this winter,” Votto said. “I got a lot of messages from friends updating me on how we were looking. I was shocked for sure and it seemed like it was one after the other. I was pleasantly surprised.”

“Like anybody who has watched this team over the last little bit, I think we’re excited about being competitive throughout the entire season. If we stay healthy, we will play some meaningful baseball in September and hopefully in October,” Votto said.