Joey Votto arrives at camp with Blue Jays eager to get him up to speed

Baseball
Published 09.03.2024
Joey Votto arrives at camp with Blue Jays eager to get him up to speed

DUNEDIN, Fla. – Joey Votto arrived at Blue Jays camp Saturday morning to take the bodily that can permit his pending minor-league deal to turn into official.

As gamers filed into the staff’s Player Development Complex, supervisor John Schneider had the prospect to talk briefly with the veteran of 17 big-league seasons. The message for now: the Blue Jays are excited to have Votto and keen to assist him get to recreation pace on his schedule.  

“We’ll work with him. We haven’t we haven’t touched on specifics yet,” Schneider stated. “We’ll let him come work out today and go from there. But whenever he’s ready to get into games, he’ll be in there.”

While acknowledging that there’s little sense in overdoing a ramp-up, it’s probably Votto sees numerous at-bats in opposition to dwell pitching, presumably beginning with simulated video games earlier than ramping as much as Grapefruit League appearances. But if he wants greater than two and a half weeks to prepare for the massive leagues, that will be no drawback, with Schneider describing the timing right here as “completely open-ended.” 

The Blue Jays’ minor-league take care of Votto would pay him $2 million on the big-league stage with one other $2 million out there in incentives, as reported by Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi. It stands to cause that Votto wouldn’t have signed with the Blue Jays except he believed he had an actual path to enjoying time. At the identical time, it is a minor-league deal, suggesting Votto should earn his means onto the staff on advantage quite than previous accolades.

That means competing for a roster spot alongside the likes of Spencer Horwitz and Daniel Vogelbach, the 2 different left-handed hitting first base choices in Blue Jays camp. Schneider spoke with Vogelbach Friday, encouraging him to maintain doing what he’s doing as a substitute of letting the Votto news throw him astray.

“It doesn’t affect him, really. It doesn’t affect him much,” Schneider stated. “Vogey was great. He was on board. He knows how the game works. And I think when you’re adding a player like Joey, everyone kind of understands that.”

The 31-year-old Vogelbach has impressed since signing a minor-league deal of his personal late final month, homering twice in Grapefruit League video games whereas working persistently good at-bats. There’s no predicting what alternatives would possibly emerge due to accidents, but when everybody’s wholesome and productive, it seems unlikely there can be room for each Votto and Vogelbach on a staff that already has a 39-year-old designated hitter in Justin Turner.

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There’s some potential for awkwardness there, to make certain. But Votto can be a participant who hit 36 dwelling runs with a .938 OPS at age 37. If he can get wherever close to that manufacturing at age 40, the Blue Jays can be thrilled.

“It’s really cool to have a borderline Hall of Famer come to his hometown team that he grew up cheering for,” Schneider stated. “But (there’s also) the effect that he can have on our team with his experiences and adding that to an already really close group, and a group that’s hungry for information. We look at it from both ends, really. It’s a cool story, but it’s not like, ‘hey Joe, come on to Canada and retire.’ There’s some real baseball there too.”