John Fay

jfay@enquirer.com

It was painful to watch Joey Votto at the plate as the Reds' road trip ended. Votto would swing and his left leg would collapse. He grimaced after each swing.

Votto's knee/quad is obviously bothering him. How much? He won't say. Votto has been reluctant to talk about his injury.

"I should expect the very best from me if I'm out there," Votto said in San Diego. "If you're on the (disabled list), you're not playing. . . If I'm on the field not performing well, it's because I'm not performing well, not because I'm not healthy."

But the visual and statistical evidence says Votto is nowhere near healthy. You have the grimaces. Votto has always choked up on the bat with two strikes. Now, he's doing earlier in the count and more exaggeratedly -- his lower hand was a good four inches up the handle during at-bats in San Diego.

Votto, a career .314 hitter, is hitting .259. His slugging percentage is .415 -- compared to his career mark at .541.

This leaves the Reds with a dilemma: Do they put Votto on the disabled list as they did from from May 21 to June 10? Or do they keep running him out there because he's the best they've got even at well less than 100 percent?

General manager Walt Jocketty thinks Votto can avoid another DL stint -- as long as things don't worsen.

"We hope so," Jocketty said. "He feels he can. He's certainly made a difference since he's been back."

That is true.

While Votto has not been Votto since returning -- he's hitting .263 with no home runs -- the team is clearly better. The Reds were 11-12 with Votto on the DL; they're 14-8 since his return. They were averaging 3.5 runs before his return and they're averaging 5.2 since.

The Reds have no ready replacement on the roster or in the minors.

But there are bigger questions than the next 15 days. Do the Reds have an obligation to protection a player from himself, i.e., put him on the DL to avoid the risk of further? Do the Reds have to protect their financial investment in Votto, who's owed $201 million after this year, i.e. put him on the DL to help insure his longterm health?

Reds manager Bryan Price said repeatedly that Votto would not be 100 percent this year. What is about the injury makes that so? When the Reds placed Votto on the DL, they called it a left distal quadricep strain and said the left knee -- the one he had surgery on twice in the 2012 -- was structurally sound.

So what is a distal quad strain?

"Distal just tells you where it is," said Will Carroll, who has written extensively about sports injuries. "Distal is down at the knee. All that is telling you is one of muscles down there very close to where it becomes patella tendon is affected. The question always was exactly what muscle was problematic and whether it had gotten down to the tendon.

"Patella tendon and the other tendons down there, the muscle kind of becomes the tendon. There's this transition zone. That can become problematic. You treat a muscle differently than you treat a tendon, though damage to both of them is going to be called a strain."

It's difficult to try to heal the injury and strengthen the area while playing virtually every day. Votto started the first 16 games after the returning from the DL. The team had one off day in that period.

"That's exactly what makes it tough," Carroll said. "If you follow any of the soccer coverage, these guys have it a lot. You get into a condition known as tendinosis, not tendinitis, where there's actually a cellular change. Basically, the cells explode. It makes them a lot more fragile. You see it a lot in soccer. You don't see as much in baseball because these guys aren't runners for the most part.''

While baseball players don't run like soccer players, their legs are key.

"There's no question that when a player goes through lower-problems, it takes a while for them to come back," said a scout who has seen Votto play frequently this year. "Joey's always going to be a guy who's going to criticized for not expanding the plate. He'll take a walk. Fans, certain front office people and coaches would like to see him expand plate, put the ball in for the groundball RBI.

"I always thought Joey stayed within himself. This year, I haven't seen him driving the ball the other way. I think a lot of that has to do with his lower half. Also over the years, Joey's done a good job of picking spots and ambushing guys. Going up with a plan: If he throws on the inner third, I'm pull the ball out of ballpark. Now everything is going opposite field. A lot that stems from the fact he doesn't have his legs underneath him as well."

All this goes back Votto's original injury in 2012. Votto has rarely been the guy he was before the original injury. When he went on the DL in 2012, he was hitting .342 with 36 doubles, 14 home runs and 49 RBI in the 86 games. His slugging percentage was .604 -- four better than what it was in the his MVP year.

When he came back, he compensated for lack of strength the leg by becoming more of line drive-line, hit-in-hole guy. He hit .316 and had a .505 on-base percentage upon his return from two knee surgeries. But he hit no home runs and had a .421 slugging percentage after his return.

He showed flashes of power since -- he hit 24 home runs last year. But in 245 games since returning from the DL in 2012, Votto's slugging percentage is .469.

"You look at the numbers (this year), he's hitting .248 against right-handed pitching with .750 OPS," a scout said. "That's amazing if you think about the whole dynamic of what he is. It's mind-boggling.

"He has more of an upper-body, handsy type swing. Not whole of lower half, not a whole lot of driving the baseball."

Whether a trip to the DL will get Votto back to old self is impossible to say. Again, Price has said Votto won't 100 percent this year.

So the Reds plan to keep him active and try to rest him more. He was out of the starting lineup two of the last six games with planned days off.

The Reds also lack alternatives to playing Votto. Jack Hannahan was signed before last season as a backup first and third baseman. Hannahan has been on the DL all year after offseason shoulder.

Hannahan has improved. But he's at least 10 days to two weeks from returning. Jocketty said the Reds have not looked at bringing another first base backup through trade.

"Not really," he said. "We got Jack for that. He's going to be back. If we got someone else, that would put in a bad spot when he came back."

Without Hannahan active, the Reds have played Brayan Pena, the second catcher, at first when Votto's been out of the lineup or they've moved Todd Frazier from third to first and played Ramon Santiago at third. In either case, it's big offensive drop-off from Votto.

And as we've seen since Votto returned from the DL, even a hurting Votto helps the Reds.