Saturday, May 7, 2011

Joey Votto's Awesome Pop Up Streak

All Reds fans would agree Joey Votto does lots of awesome things.  Recent focus has been put on that fact that Joey Votto has reached base in his first 32 games of the season.  That is moderately awesome by Vottoian standards. But even more impressive is his streak of avoiding pop ups.  Last year Joey was the only batter in both leagues to have a 0 pop ups(among those qualified for batting title).        

I checked today and there are 16 players yet to pop up in 2011.   Unsurprisingly, Joey Votto is one of those 16 along with Brandon Phillips.  That means for at least 182 regular season games, Joey Votto has not popped out.    He also did not pop out in the three post season games last year.

Avoiding pop outs is not new for Joey.  In 2009 he had the third lowest pop up % in the majors at 1.4% and in 2008 he popped up 3.8% of the time which was good for 15th in the majors.  The last time that anyone had a 0% pop out rate was Larry Bigbie for the Orioles back in 2004.  In fact Larry had a career long aversion to pop ups.  In his entire 392 game career he only popped out 1 time. 

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