Last week I wrote about Joey Votto's streak of avoiding pop outs which has continued for five more games since I wrote that post (187 games across 2010/2011). I recently read an article by Mike Axisa on Rotographs where he made an argument that Pujols was still the best first baseman and Votto was a close 2nd. Mike was evaluating from a fantasy baseball perspective so he is not necessarily saying who is the best player but who is the best fantasy player. But as a Reds fan anytime a Cardinal is found to be better than a Red I feel a fundamental law of the universe has been broken. So I am going to look deeper in the stats to find the inevitable truth that Joey Votto is the best first baseman in baseball.
There are two other first basemen who have the honor of even being mentioned in the same sentence as Votto when talking about best first basemen, Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera. I'm going to look just at hitting since that is what makes a great first baseman. We'll look at 3 layers of performance. We will look first at end results, then batted balls, and finally the at the plate. That should give us a full picture of what these three stars do and how they do it.
The Results
First let's start with a chart of the three players on a total offensive statistic. Let's use WOBA from FanGraphs. Even if you don't know what wOBA is (Here is an explanation) you can see all three players are firmly in the good range. Pujols has been the best for a long time but in 2010 and 2011 he has been passed up. Votto last year had a year comparable to the early 2000 Pujols and seems to be sustaining it in 2011. So even if Pujols bounces back they are close. Cabrera had his best year last year but just does not seem to be able to reach the same level Pujols and Votto have.
The ZiPS projection for the remainder of the season also has Votto slightly on top.
Votto - 416 wOBA (310/409/549)
Pujols - 410 wOBA (305/408/563)
Cabrera - 409 wOBA (304/398/560)
Batted Ball
One level deeper than results is what do they do when they make contact. From the table below we see that Votto tends to be more of a line drive hitter. All three have great HR/FB ratios in the 19-20% range versus a league average of 10.5%. But given Cabrera/Pujols will hit more fly balls they will hit more home runs while Votto is the better pure hitter with his high line drive rate. Couple this table with the fact that Votto never pops out we have to give the edge to Votto for the quality of his hits when he makes contact.
| | | LD% | GB% | FB% | HR/FB |
| Votto | 2010 | 20.0% | 45.2% | 34.8% | 25.0% |
| | 2011 | 27.8% | 42.6% | 29.6% | 15.6% |
| | Career | 22.9% | 42.2% | 34.9% | 19.6% |
| Cabrera | 2010 | 18.9% | 39.3% | 41.7% | 19.8% |
| | 2011 | 19.6% | 47.3% | 33.0% | 18.9% |
| | Career | 21.1% | 41.6% | 37.3% | 18.4% |
| Pujols | 2010 | 17.2% | 38.3% | 44.5% | 18.3% |
| | 2011 | 14.9% | 50.7% | 34.3% | 15.2% |
| | Career | 19.1% | 40.8% | 40.1% | 19.8% |
Pitch by Pitch
The final look is what happens at the plate. The first chart is looking at plate discipline. This chart shows a pretty clear order with Pujols the most patient, Cabrera the least, with Votto in the middle. Votto and Cabrera actually swing more than league average (45.6% in 2010). One other interesting thing is of the three it seems the league is most willing to throw to Pujols probably because he chases outside so rarely.
| | | O-Swing% | Z-Swing% | Swing% | Zone% |
| Votto | 2010 | 29.9% | 72.9% | 47.9% | 41.8% |
| | 2011 | 26.1% | 65.7% | 42.7% | 41.9% |
| | Career | 26.8% | 72.7% | 47.5% | 45.2% |
| Cabrera | 2010 | 32.7% | 74.1% | 50.2% | 42.4% |
| | 2011 | 29.2% | 73.7% | 46.9% | 39.8% |
| | Career | 28.0% | 70.7% | 49.1% | 49.5% |
| Pujols | 2010 | 27.5% | 63.0% | 43.2% | 44.2% |
| | 2011 | 21.3% | 61.2% | 40.1% | 47.3% |
| | Career | 20.3% | 65.3% | 42.2% | 48.8% |
O-Swing% - % of time swing at pitch outside strike zone.
Z-Swing% - % of time swing at pitch inside strike zone.
Swing% - % of time swing at pitch
Zone% - % of pitches in strike zone.
The final thing to look at is contact rates when they do swing. If you were wondering what makes Pujols special I think we found it. He is making contact far more often and in fact he is in the top 25 in MLB over 2010/2011 in contact %. Votto and Cabrera are both a bit below average (80.7% in 2010) in contact %.
| | | O-Contact% | Z-Contact% | Contact% | SwStr% |
| Votto | 2010 | 69.4% | 82.4% | 77.7% | 10.4% |
| | 2011 | 69.5% | 86.1% | 80.2% | 8.3% |
| | Career | 62.9% | 83.7% | 77.3% | 10.4% |
| Cabrera | 2010 | 67.6% | 86.0% | 79.1% | 9.6% |
| | 2011 | 78.8% | 84.2% | 82.2% | 7.6% |
| | Career | 59.0% | 86.1% | 78.3% | 10.2% |
| Pujols | 2010 | 76.0% | 90.6% | 85.4% | 5.8% |
| | 2011 | 84.9% | 91.2% | 89.4% | 3.9% |
| | Career | 84.9% | 92.1% | 86.1% | 5.6% |
Summary
From what we have seen here Pujols has contact skills that make him stand out from the other two. Votto has better results when he does make contact. All three will knock it out of the park 20% of the time they hit a fly ball. Overall these are three great players who have very close skill levels. The overall results seem to say that Votto's ability to hit the ball with quality are leading to slightly better results than Pujols approach so I give the overall race to Votto by a nose over Pujols with Cabrera not a far third.
