Joey Votto spent the better part of six months deciding whether to join NBC’s baseball coverage, with the network persistently calling while he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do after 25 years of being serious about baseball.
Not that he won’t be serious as he joins NBC’s stable of studio analysts — which also includes Clayton Kershaw and Anthony Rizzo — but Votto wasn’t sure what he wanted his post-playing career to look like. And now that he has a clearer picture, the former Reds first baseman appeared on Jim Day’s podcast this week and explained the recruitment process that led to him joining NBC’s Sunday Night Baseball coverage starting in March.
But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t apprehensive. It also doesn’t mean he knows what his new role entails, either.
“To the credit of NBC, they were persistent, and they let me know they had quite a bit of interest,” Votto said. “And it had been months — or longer — maybe about half a year that they showed real interest. I was apprehensive. I think that after getting done doing something for so long… I would say I was pretty serious about baseball for 25 years or so. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I still think there’s some moments where I’m trying to figure out the next steps, but I love the sport.”
Votto retired in August 2024 after 17 seasons with Cincinnati. He’s 42 years old and spent his entire adult life playing professional baseball. Broadcasting requires completely different skills than playing, and Votto wasn’t sure he wanted to make that jump, even with multiple networks pursuing him.
He told Dan Patrick in March 2024 that he’d received 10 times as many analyst job offers as baseball offers that offseason. Votto turned them all down to sign a minor league deal with Toronto and chase one more season. That delayed any broadcasting career by several months.
Once Votto retired, the interest picked back up. Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports reported in November of last year that Votto was generating significant interest from MLB’s new media partners.
Which leads us back to NBC, which announced that Votto, as well as Kershaw and Rizzo, will serve as pregame analysts for the Wild Card round of the MLB playoffs in fall 2026 and will also appear on select Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts during the regular season alongside hosts Bob Costas and Ahmed Fareed.
Just last week, Awful Announcing confirmed that NBC plans to use local analysts alongside Jason Benetti — who is expected to be the play-by-play voice for the network — for Sunday Night Baseball telecasts. Whether Votto would be considered a “local analyst” for the Reds remains to be seen, but as of now, the Reds are only scheduled for a Sunday afternoon doubleheader on Aug. 30, as well as multiple Sunday Morning Leadoff games on Peacock.
So, yes, there is ambiguity about Votto’s role, but even if there wasn’t, he doesn’t seem too inclined to share.
“I would say that if I had that information, I probably wouldn’t be able to share it because it’s not mine to hand out, but I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, and it’s kind of exciting,” Votto said.
Part of what made Votto apprehensive about broadcasting in the first place is the question of whether what he loves about baseball translates to TV. He’s obsessed with specific parts of the game from 17 years in the majors. But are those the parts casual fans care about? And can he explain why they should?
“The sport is a beautiful sport,” Votto continued. “There’s parts of the game that I really, really love. It’s not what I think the average, casual fan loves. I think I love some very specific parts of the sport. And I think that’s probably what I can average the average fan, because my level of both experience and specific fandom is, I think, close to a 10 in terms of what I genuinely love about the sport.”
That’s the challenge. Plenty of former players love baseball at a level 10 but struggle to explain why in ways that make for good TV. They either can’t articulate what they’re thinking or they get too deep into the weeds for casual viewers to follow. Votto seems aware of the risk, which probably explains why he spent six months deciding whether to take the job. He wasn’t sure he had the skills to bridge that gap between what he loves and what makes for compelling television.
NBC’s first broadcast is March 26, when the Pirates visit the Mets at 1 p.m. ET, followed by the Dodgers raising their World Series banner before hosting the Diamondbacks at 8 p.m. ET in primetime. We’d imagine that Votto will be part of the pregame coverage in some capacity. Whether he figures out exactly what that capacity is before then is anyone’s guess, but the uncertainty doesn’t seem to bother him. In fact, it excites him.