Joey Votto announces his retirement

Congrats on a Hall of Fame career, Joseph Daniel!

Joey Votto, the legendary first baseman of the Cincinnati Reds who will be enshrined in Cooperstown as a Hall of Famer one day, just announced via Instagram that he’s ending his comeback attempt within the Toronto Blue Jays organization and will retire from the game of baseball.

Votto, who’ll turn 41 years old in about two and half weeks, saw his option not picked up by the Reds last winter and became a free agent for the first time in his career. After the major arm and shoulder injuries that had plagued him over his final years as a Red, he had to settle for a minor league deal - one that came from the Blue Jays, the team from his hometown metro across the border.

A serious ankle injury derailed his attempt to make the club out of spring, however, and throughout his rehab process (and attempt to prove he could still be a big leaguer) he ran into countless other frustrations - not least of which was, as he stated above, that he just didn’t think he was good enough anymore.

He’ll wrap his career with a career .920 OPS and 144 OPS+ across 7252 PA. Baseball Reference tallies him with 64.5 career bWAR, his 356 HR and 1144 career RBI less indicative of his impact on the game than seven seasons in which he led his league in On-Base Percentage.

We’ll have more on Votto as this process becomes official. For now, though, I’d like to simply say thank you to the man whose output made me interested in the game enough to want to write about it. It’s been quite the ride, Joey - enjoy some time off for the first time in a few decades, eh?