The New York Yankees Luke Voit and his wife Tori have announced they are expecting their first child, as reported by Luke today on his Instagram account. The pair married in 2019 after being engaged for two years. They both attended the same school, Lafayette High School. Interestingly, Luke was on the baseball team, and Tori was a cheerleader for the school team. Luke has a younger brother John, who played defensive tackle with the Army Black Knights football team. Luke, after his banner year with the Yankees, has to be on the top of the world today.
Luke Voit is a 29-year-old first baseman. Luke has had a relatively unremarkable baseball career, but how he got to the Yankees and what he has done while here is interesting. Luke was born in Wildwood, Missouri, and attended Lafayette High School there. In high school, he played football as a fullback and middle linebacker. He also played baseball, where he got a lot of experience. In his first three years, he played first base and third base. Interestingly in his senior year, he played catcher. Shoulder injuries while in high school ended any career he may have had in football.
Throughout his minor league career, he was always on the edge of being good. In June of 2017, the Cards promoted him to the bigs. In July of 2017, In his very first at-bat, he was plunked in the back. After 114 at-bats, he hit his first home run. He ended the season with a batting average of .246 with four home runs and 18 RBI’s, still unremarkable but good enough to be used in a trade by the Cards to get players they needed.
In July of 2018, the Cards traded Luke Voit to the New York Yankees and bonus pool money to get pitcher Chasen Shrive and Giovanny Gallegos. The Yanks assigned him to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The Yanks swiftly promoted him to the majors, in part to play first, in the absence of Greg Bird, but after batting .188 in five games, they demoted him back to Scranton. After playing better in the minors and with the injury to Didi Gregorius, he was again called up to the Stadium. This time something happened; he seemed to embrace the limelight and energy of New York.
Playing for Greg Bird, he soon had hit ten home runs, and after hitting .458, he was named MLB player of the week on October 1st. He ended the season hitting .333 with 14 home runs and 33 RBI’s in just 39 games. In the 2018 Wild Card game, he hit a two-run triple to help the Yankees win 7-2. That triple seemed to have given Luke a place as a Yankee favorite.
Voit didn’t escape the injury plague that hit the team in 2019. An abdominal injury right around the London series sidelined him, continued to be problematic upon Voit’s return, and eventually required surgery once the Yankees were eliminated from the playoffs. Voit was dreadful after getting hurt, but I think his performance pre-injury gets overlooked easily. Voit in 2019 was out for two stints. That injury caused him to play in only 118 games. Before his season was derailed, he led the New York Yankees, he led the team in home runs and was having a better season than Miguel Torres or DJ LeMahieu. At the plate, he seldom wasted an at-bat. He doesn’t swing at bad pitches and only had one pop up in the first half of the season.
Fast forward to the bizarre 2020 baseball season. Luke played well in spring training and summer camp. When the shortened season started, Voit got his first hit in the last game of the Washington Nationals series, and it was a home run. Little did the New York Yankees know at the time that that hit would start a season for Luke Voit that might make him this year’s Yankees MVP. In the next series against the Orioles, he would get two hits, one of them a homer that drove in four runs. At the beginning of the season, it was assumed that Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge would have the most significant impact on the Yankees. As it turns out, neither of them could stay healthy enough to stay on the field. Voit had been healthy, and he has had his best play in his three years with the Yankees while still playing through a foot issue. He ended the season hitting .277 with 22 home runs.