September 8, 2019

By Neil Munro

Canadian Baseball Network

On September 6, in a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Joey Votto crossed home plate to score the 1,000th run of his career. Votto had drawn a walk and scored his milestone run when Eugenio Suarez blasted his forty-second homer of the season in the fifth inning.

Unfortunately for Votto and the Reds, they came out on the short end of a 7-5 loss to the Diamondbacks. It was the 1,700th game of Votto’s career.

Votto becomes just the second Canadian (after Larry Walker) to reach the millennium mark in runs scored. Indeed, he stands second behind Walker in a number of career batting categories, including at bats (6,029 to 6,907), base hits (1,852 to 2,160), total bases (3,140 to 3,904), doubles (399 to 471), home runs (283 to 383) and OPS (.965 to .978).

Votto is number one on the all-time Canadian list in bases on balls (with 1,167) and on-base percentage (.422). He has also struck out more times than any other Canadian batter having whiffed 1,296 times.

The table below illustrates the top fifteen Canadians in career runs scored.

Votto has surpassed Larry Walker in the number of seasons in which he reached the century mark in runs scored. Votto had five seasons with 100 or more runs to Walker’s four. Tip O’Neill, a Canadian batting star of the nineteenth century, also reached 100 runs scored five times.

In the grand scheme of things, it might not seem than Votto’s reaching 1,000 career runs scored is all that impressive in that 337 other major leaguers have also scored more than 1,000 runs over the course of their careers. Whether Votto can ultimately pass Walker for the most runs in a career remains to be seen. Votto is 35 years old now and he will celebrate his 36th birthday in just a few days (September 10). He will need four more seasons at the very least to surpass Walker, so he will have to play until his 40th birthday to accomplish that feat.

It is far more likely that Freddie Freeman (with joint Canadian-American citizenship) will eventually pass both Walker and Votto on the career runs scored list. Freeman is just 29 years old right now, and even though he still needs another 560 runs to accomplish that, he is averaging better than 100 runs a year in his last few seasons. Interestingly enough, Freeman will celebrate his birthday (number 30) two days after Votto does (on September 12).

Canadian Career Leaders in Runs Scored (through September 6, 2019)