Now that Joey Votto is officially a member of the Blue Jays, he spoke with multiple reporters (including the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Gordon Wittenmyer, Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith, and The Athletic’s Kaitlyn McGrath and C. Trent Rosencrans) to discuss his trip through free agency, and his eventual landing spot with his hometown team.
After a long offseason of waiting, the first baseman’s contract seemed to come together pretty quickly, as Votto said he called Jays GM Ross Atkins last week to discuss the eventual minor league deal. Though Votto felt he might’ve been able to land a guaranteed contract elsewhere, the idea of a minors deal with the Jays in particular proved tempting as a challenge.
“I need the time to prepare and resharpen my game. A goal of mine is to be fully prepared the second I return to major league competition. The major league level is about execution,” Votto told McGrath and Rosencrans in a text message.
To this end, Votto is fully open to starting the season in Triple-A if he needs more time to ramp up. In fact, he told Nicholson-Smith and company that he “signed the deal assuming that that was going to be the case. I’m trying to prove I’m still a capable player and the last couple of seasons were not real. And I have confidence that that will be the case.”
The six-time All-Star is entering his age-40 season, so there are some obvious questions about whether or not Votto can still be productive as he looks towards what would be his 18th Major League season. It already seemed like Votto was starting to decline when he posted (by his past standards) subpar numbers in both 2019 and 2020, but he then rebounded with another big campaign in the 2021 season. However, his performance dipped after over the last two seasons, seemingly due in part to a longstanding shoulder issue that became too painful for Votto to ignore. He underwent rotator cuff surgery in August 2022, and hit only .204/.317/.394 over 618 total plate appearances over the last two seasons.
Perhaps the most important aspect is that Votto is feeling healthy as he enters spring camp, and that he is viewing his new assignment with the Blue Jays as a completely fresh start. “I get to once again move towards, for the second time in my professional career, (trying to) make it to the major leagues. And it excites me,” Votto said. “It excites me to be in a hotel room in Florida, to take a shuttle or an Uber to the ballpark and be a minor-league player with an unknown number just trying my very best to make a team. It invigorates me. It’s what I feel I’ve been about, and it brings me great joy….I just I want to work and I want to compete and I want to fit in. I want to get along with guys, I want to be liked and I want to represent myself, my family and my country well. And this is the perfect opportunity.”
While Votto has embraced being a minor league signing, he did think such an offer was going to eventually come from the Reds. He told both McGrath/Rosencrans and Wittenmyer that his initial aim was to spend his entire career in Cincinnati, and even after the Reds declined their $20MM club option on his services for 2024, he figured he would eventually be offered a minors contract or a big league deal with a small guarantee by his longtime organization.
Instead, it seemed like the Reds were ready to move on to their next generation of young talent, as president of baseball operations Nick Krall even outright said in late January that “we don’t plan to bring [Votto] back as of now.” Votto doesn’t seem to have any hard feelings, noting that “the Reds team is STACKED and there didn’t appear to be playing time for me so we had to pivot.”
As it turned out, Votto ended up being “grateful for the free agent experience,” as he told Wittenmyer. “The vast majority of it was growth and learning about myself and things I need to change.” Simply being on the open market was new for Votto, who never been a free agent due to his two prior extensions (a three-year, $38MM deal and his big ten-year, $225MM contract) with Cincinnati.
“There was a part of me that was scared, because it becomes uncharted waters for me,” Votto told Wittenmyer. “It’s intimidating because I’d never as an adult been by myself. I was always tied to an organization and specifically [the Reds]. But quickly, I was like, ’No, this is good. You need this as a man, as an individual. You need this to grow. And what is the next step you need to take Are you done?’ I answered that quickly: No. So what’s the answer? Let’s get to work.”