C. Trent Rosecrans

crosecrans@enquirer.com

GOODYEAR, Ariz. — Hitting a home run is always a good feeling, but for Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart, hitting one right-handed, like he did on Saturday, “almost feels twice as good” as hitting one left-handed.

All four of Barnhart’s career homers in the big leagues have come from the left side, and in his two years in the big leagues, he’s hit .259 from the left side and .158 from the right side. Barnhart even considered giving up switch-hitting at one point, but has stuck with it.

“Skip Schumaker helped me out a lot last season with the thought he thinks of, trying to stay up the middle more, and how he thinks about that during an at-bat,” Barnhart said. “It kind of clicked with me a little bit. It was nice to go into an offseason and not try to recreate things. Right-handed, I’ve done so many different set-ups, so many thought processes and finding one I thought worked the end of last year, I worked to make that better instead of trying to recreate anything. More than anything, it’s added confidence and that’s half the battle sometimes.”

Barnhart started the 2015 season 2-for-23 (.086) as a right-handed hitter and finished 6-for-22 (.272). Those are certainly small samples, but they do add confidence.

Barnhart knows he has more power left-handed, and has tried to use the tweaks in his mechanics and approach while hitting right-handed. He’s used some advice he got early in his career from former Red Dmitri Young to keep the two separate.

“He said he almost had two alter egos when he right-handed he was a completely different hitter than he was when he was left handed,” Barnhart said. “It’s taken me a while to realize that I’m that way, that I can take more chances left-handed, I can try to do more damage left-handed than right-handed.”

DISCO LESSONS: A rookie a year ago, Reds right-hander Anthony DeSclafani is now a veteran, especially when viewed in relation to the rest of the starting pitching in Reds camp.

A year ago, DeSclafani was the one talking to other pitchers to get their thoughts, and this year the tables have been turned.

After his impressive outing in Saturday’s “B” game, Rookie Davis said he’d been talking to DeSclafani about his curveball and it had been a big help.

“I think I’d help anybody that would ask for my opinion or to help, I don’t think it matters who it is. It’s more than young guys would ask,” DeSclafani said on Sunday. “Johnny (Cueto) wouldn’t come to me or anything like that. I’m glad (the younger players do). I’m an open book, anything I can do to help out with anybody, I’ll do.”

Reds manager Bryan Price has noticed Davis’ improvement. Davis throws two curveballs, one a bigger, more looping traditional curveball and the other one is tighter and harder, more like a slider. The former is more of a get-ahead pitch, while the latter is an effective out pitch.

“He had it going on yesterday,” Price said of Davis. “He was throwing hard. He had a really good changeup. The changeup has been the pitch that really needed to grow more than any pitch this spring because he had a good fastball-curveball coming in. The changeup – all three were for strikes yesterday, low strikes. A really nice mix of pitches. He really looked very good, very mature, polished.”

ON HOLD: Billy Hamilton has played in one spring game, and neither Devin Mesoraco nor Zack Cozart have seen Cactus League action yet. While Hamilton’s shoulder has been somewhat of a setback, Price isn’t worried yet about the availability of any of the three for Opening Day yet.

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“I would tell you if I was really concerned about Opening Day, I will tell you that. At this point in time, I am not,” Price said. “I would certainly like to see these guys here by the time we get to the middle of the month, to be ready to start to get after it.”

Cozart’s return should come this week, Price said.

“He’s still got to go out there and play and he’s got to respond well to playing on a regular basis before we can know that for sure. And that will be the same thing with Devin,” Price said. “We’ve got some target dates with Devin but I think we’ll get a little closer before we project anything.”

As for Hamilton, he’s day-to-day at this point.

“I had him DHing a lot on the front end of spring training games. But when he’s swinging the bat and that irritated it, it really just put us in the situation – beyond conditioning stuff – we really had to limit him from baseball activity,” Price said. “That really is an unknown concern right now. We don’t know how long it’s going to take before he feels good enough to play again.”