Reds notes: Cozart working to get back on the field

Even though his season ended in June, Zack Cozart is hoping to be back on the field at Great American Ball Park by the end of the season, taking ground balls.

So far, he said, Reds physical therapist Christy Sweeney hasn’t told him it won’t happen.

“She gave me the old, ‘we’ll see.’ That’s not a no,” Cozart said on Sunday. “That’s a positive. I’ve missed being out there.”

Monday will mark the 12-week mark since undergoing surgery to repair a torn tendon and ligaments in his right knee. On Wednesday, Cozart will have a strength test and if he passes that, he can begin running and doing agility drills.

Cozart still expects to be at 100 percent by spring training.

“It’s one of the few positives of getting hurt that early in the year is that I have so long to get ready,” Cozart said. “If this happened right now, I’d have zero chance to be ready for spring training. I try to find the positives in it for sure.”

There’s no more pain, Cozart said, but more than anything, he’s fighting the boredom of not playing and not competing. He and Devin Mesoraco, who is out with a hip injury, are working out together in the weight room and competing there. The old friends — both were taken in the 2007 draft — have turned their workout and rehab sessions into their own small competitions, complete with trash talking.

The fact that team has struggled in their absence isn’t helping, either.

“It’s also tough the way we’ve been playing — the last two years really. Not too long ago, we were kicking everyone’s butt. We were winning a lot,” Cozart said. “Some of these young guys haven’t felt that. I want to win. That’s one of the things you get nervous about, getting all these young guys up here and getting used to losing, that’s not the way we think. It’s definitely a tough stretch. It’s a good learning experience for our young pitching staff. Now we’re getting some position players in there to play, so I mean, I guess you’ve got to look at the positives, because the season’s going not the way we expected for sure. I wish I could be out there.”

One of the few bright spots for the Reds has been the play of Cozart’s replacement, Eugenio Suarez. The 24-year-old entered Sunday’s game hitting .288/.325/.565 with 11 home runs and 41 RBI.

“Offensively, he just seems to make consistent hard contact, which is hard to do. You don’t see a kid his age come up and see it — we’ve faced some good pitching, too,” Cozart said. “I think defensively he’s improved, I see him working hard with Freddie (Benavides) out there to get better.”

FINNEGAN COULD START: Brandon Finnegan could get the nod for Wednesday’s series finale against the Pirates, or Keyvius Sampson could return on short rest because he threw just three innings in Saturday night’s game.

The Reds had a gap in the rotation created by Friday night’s rainout.

“It could be one of two — we could bring Sampson back, he only threw three innings or potentially one of the kids that we’re bringing up from Triple-A, probably make a decision on that here in the next 24 hours, I’d guess,” Reds manager Bryan Price said.

Finnegan last pitched Friday for the Bats, earning his third loss with Louisville and falling to 0-6 with a 5.65 ERA overall in the minors this season. However, the 22-year old is 3-0 with a 2.96 ERA in 14 big-league appearances this season, all out of the bullpen.

“I think the feeling is he could be pitching in the big leagues right now as a relief pitcher, but the ceiling is kind of like where we were with (Aroldis) Chapman years ago, do we really want to commit to the bullpen when the kid can potentially be a starting pitcher?” Price said. “The value, really, is as the starter. If that’s something down the road if we determine he’s better suited as a reliever, that’s an easy switch. He proved he could do that last year and this year.”

A college starter at TCU, Finnegan pitched in both the College World Series and the World Series in 2014, becoming the first player in baseball history to do both in one season.

Finnegan has bounced between the minors and the majors, in short to help the Royals’ bullpen. Since being traded to Cincinnati, he’s been exclusively used as a starter. The Reds have stretched him out, getting him to 88 pitches in his last start. But he has struggled with his command. He’s allowed 31 hits and 17 walks in 30 1/3 innings, but also struck out 30.

“He was a college starting pitcher and I think being able to isolate him for an inning or two at a time at the big-league level and let his stuff play out — the velocity was off the charts and the hard slider is a great combination in the role that Kansas City used him,” Price said. “However, we’re reverting back to this guy being a college starter and taking it to Triple-A and saying, hey, be a college starter and manage a lineup three times, get through the lineup three times. It’s a huge jump, it’s a huge change. He’s at a time of maturing as a starter and getting back to learning how to manage that lineup. We’ve liked the stuff, the stuff has been good, it’s just been harnessing it more for a higher percentage of strikes and finding a way to work his way through that lineup.”

DUVALL’S DINGER: Adam Duvall homered in his big-league debut, in his 2015 debut in the minors, in his debut with his hometown Louisville Bats after the trade of Mike Leake and then in his Reds debut last week in Chicago. He didn’t homer in his Great American Ball Park debut in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader, though, striking out as a pinch hitter.

However, he did homer in his first start at Great American Ball Park, hitting a home run in the ninth inning of Saturday’s game two loss.

A Louisville native, Duvall didn’t grow up a fan of the Reds, but that didn’t make his first home run here any less special, he said.

“Every home run is special,” Duvall said. “It’s special because there’s a lot of people back home watching and they’ve watched me along my journey. It’s kind of gratifying for me to see them happy.”

VILLARREAL’S RBI: Pedro Villarreal had six hits in 65 plate appearances in the minors and one hit in eight plate appearances in the majors before Saturday’s second game of a doubleheader. All seven of those hits were singles.

Then came Saturday. In the second game of the doubleheader, Villarreal entered the game for starter Keyvius Sampson after a one-hour, 33-minute rain delay.

With two outs and a runner on second, the Brewers elected to intentionally walk Adam Duvall with Villarreal on deck, batting eighth.

Villarreal answered with a double to left-center field. Villarreal hit the ball well, but the thought that it might find its way into the stands never entered his mind.

“I just saw the ball and started running,” Villarreal said. “I didn’t know where the outfield was playing, I thought they might have a chance to get it, I saw it was in the air long enough (to be caught).”

Two runs scored, pulling the Reds within a run at 3-2, but the Reds went on to lose 7-3.