Joey Votto Still Working To Comeback

http://donatelifeohio.org/

Joey Votto took ground balls today at Great American Ball Park before batting practice.

It came as a surprise to observers and maybe surprised manager Bryan Price, who gave an update on the 2010 MVP before the game.

http://www.wiedemannbeer.com/

With just 18 games left the smart money said that Votto wouldn't be ready to come back this season but Price indicated otherwise before the game with St. Louis.

"He’s done some tee work. As you would know, everything would go up incrementally. When it’s going to go up, that’s hard for me to say. He’s hit off the tee. He’s taken groundballs. As the trainers allow, he will increase his workload unless there’s a reason to not increase it," Price said. "He took 25 ground balls yesterday, day off today."

Votto was out taking ground balls before the game anyway.

Price does not expect to see Dylan Axelrod on the mound again this season.

 

Reds caricatures for sale fstopjd@fuse.net

“Obliques are tenuous." Price said. "I don’t have a ton of optimism that he’ll be back, but I haven’t been told he won’t be back. Maybe he will be. Maybe we got it before it was out of control. Hard for me to say. With this particular injury and a pitcher, I’m not terribly optimistic.”

 

David Holmberg will replace Axelrod in the rotation over the last 18 games.

 

“The biggest thing was the fourth inning where he got erratic and was able to recover (from a bases loaded situation). In his previous starts, he hasn’t. If he’s been erratic and lost his command, he hasn’t been able to make the corrections in locating good quality pitches," Price said. "He was able to do that. He was still erratic with his command. At one point in time, he was 50-50 with his pitches – it was 28 balls and 28 strikes, I think – but he still had 5 2-3 of scoreless baseball, so you can’t look that in the mouth. We’ll take that any day. You don’t find many guys at 50-50 who have a ton of success at this level, especially starters, but he managed it. He worked around it. The other part of it was I think he did a pretty nice job controlling the running game."