Joey Votto stares at his cell phone so intently th

Joey Votto stares at his cell phone so intently that you're not sure whether you want to interrupt him. He glances at you. "I'm just playing Scrabble," he says.This is something at which he would seem to be proficient, because of the thought he puts into every day, every at-bat, every pitch. Cincinnati Reds Jerseys And these days, his at-bats are different, now that he's got a Most Valuable Player Award on his résumé and a reputation, among opposing pitchers, for turning leads into deficits.Dusty Baker, the Cincinnati Reds manager, has seen the evolution in how pitchers work to Votto, and he's talked with Votto about how another hitter he knew in the past faced the same challenge: Barry Bonds.Pitchers work to Votto the way they'd creep around a gator, with extraordinary wariness. There are no cookies any more,Ferragamo Sunglaess, no easy get-ahead fastballs to start an at-bat, no predictable fastballs when the pitcher is behind in the count.So Votto must be patient.
He must wait for pitchers to throw him a strike, and he must be focused, because at any time, the pitcher might throw him the only hittable pitch he'll get in a sequence of pitches. "But I'm kind of in a good position, because I can let the game come to me," he says. "Before, I felt like I had to go get it."Pitchers will try to feel out what my weaknesses are on any given day, until I beat them. Cheap MLB Jerseys From China And then they change. And they won't throw the same pitch repeatedly. Like St. Louis, in the past the Cardinals would have a completely different approach every single at-bat that I would face them."Think about it from the perspective of the gator: He knows nobody is going to charge head-on. He merely has to be ready for the moment when the leg comes close enough to snatch."I have to be ready and locked into every single pitch," Votto says. "That pitch [to hit] might come in a 3-0 count. It might come that 1-1 pitch -- and where people sometimes get confused is that it doesn't have to be a fastball."