Cincinnati Reds Legend and Fan Favorite Joey Votto announced his retirement recently. Amongst active position players he was the longest tenured member of the Topps All-Star Rookie Cup. That baton has now been passed on to Giancarlo Stanton and Andrew McCutchen who were both named as outfielders to the TASR team in 2011. Justin Verlander (Class of 2007) remains the elder statesman among all active players.
2009 Topps #390 Joey Votto
This is not Joey Votto's Rookie card, he was in the 2008 Topps base set, it is his 2nd Topps flagship card. Couple of quick Notes on the card:
-The memorial patch that we can get a glimpse of is for Reds one time young phenom and announcer Joe Nuxhall.
-Joey Votto is not sacrificing here, well at least not successfully. In 8746 career Plate Appearances Joey Votto did not have one Sacrifice Hit. That is the fifth highest number of PAs for a Zero SH player. Carlos Santana has a good chance of passing Votto by the end of the season.
2008 Season and ROY
Joey Votto had his first full season in 2008 and it was a very productive one (.297/24/84 3.3 WAR) which was good enough to earn him the Rookie Cup at first base. The nearest competitor was Chris Davis (.285/17/55 1.1 WAR)
In fact Votto's year was so good he was also in the running for NL Rookie of the Year. He finished 2nd in the voting to Cubs Catcher Geovany Soto (.285/23/86 3.3 WAR). Those numbers are very similar but Soto received 31 of 32 first place votes. He had the edge on Votto for two reasons 1) Playing catcher rather than first base 2) Soto's Cubs won the NL Central finishing 23.5 games in front of the Reds.
Overall the 2009 Rookie Cup Team ended up being a solid class that included Votto's longtime teammate Jay Bruce, Evan Longoria, Denard Span and Alexei Ramirez. Clearly the best players were now fellow 2023 retiree Longoria and Votto. Both have very similar offensive numbers with Votto edging out Longoria due to many more walks (1365 vs 730). Of course Longoria played the more challenging position of 3rd Base and has a more significant postseason resume.
Among the first 52 Rookie Cup Classes 2009 ranks in the top third of the years for which we have tabulated stats (1960-2011). The most prominent key number for the 2009 team is Home Runs, the squads 1475 dingers rank 13th - Votto, Longoria and Bruce combined for 1014.
Rookie Cup Team: Longest Tenured Actives
With Joey Votto's exit a struggling Anthony Rizzo has become the Rookie Cup's longest tenured first baseman*. Here is a complete list of longest tenured TASR winners
*I believe both Justin Heyward and Wade Miley have been released and are possibly retired. The Heyward slot would be succeeded by Mike Trout and Bryce Harper (both 2013, Harper was an OF on the team), 2nd in line for LHP is Carlos Rodon
Also since Bryce Harper was an outfielder on the Rookie Cup Team he remains so for this exercise, otherwise he would be tied with Rizzo for first base honors.
Extra Innings
Turns out that Joey Votto Rookie Cup card has so much going on that we will need to expand this into multiple postings. Look for some additional info next week.
Sources and Links
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