A little fun on my favorite buck sucker with 20% of the season gone. Right on cue Votto watches a third strike, down the middle, waist high in his first AB tonight in Boston. lol.
Votto is tearing it up with a .272/.425/.447 with 4 HRs, 10 RBIs and 17 Runs. He is signed for 13 years at $263 M - which works out to the $20 M average. He has been moved to the 2 hole as we know, since he sucked at the #3.
Question: Where does Votto rank at this point in the season compared to other 2 hole hitters in the NL?
Answer: He is tied for 4th best production. Currently Justin Upton, Yadier Molina and Anthony Rendon have clearly better production. Neil Walker and Daniel Murphy have equal type production depending on what stats you value most. The highest paid in that group are Molina and Upton, who make half of what Votto does on his contract average. Molina plays a more critical, physical position and has higher production. The next two, Walker and Murphy each make around 25-30% of what Votto makes on his average at $5.7 M each. Rendon is the young gun at 23 years old and is making around $2 M.
Unfortunately, Votto's production is likely to stay the same based on trends from his return from the knee injury. Now consider that the club paid him to be the best hitter and third in the order. In reality he should be compared to the best hitter on each team. However, that would be an even worse comparison.
What the Sabermetrics guys leave out are the life changing events that affect production and change the trend lines. They either go out over some period of a career, or against other players at the same position. They tend to leave the value out of it because it is harder to quantify.
