Philadelphia, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – The Cincinnati Reds will have catcher Devin Mesoraco back in the lineup for Friday’s opener of a three-game series with the Philadelphia Phillies, though they could be without All-Star first baseman Joey Votto for the entirety of their upcoming road trip.<\/p>\n
Votto remained in Cincinnati Friday to undergo an MRI on his left knee, the results of which are yet unknown.<\/p>\n
The injury may explain Votto’s recent struggles at the plate. The slugger is batting just .182 (10-for-52) with two home runs and two RBI over his last 16 games and struck out in all three of his official at-bats Thursday against San Diego.<\/p>\n
Votto is hitting a career-low .257 with six homers and 12 RBI in 39 games this season. The four-time All-Star has produced at least a .305 average in each of the previous five campaigns.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old missed more than seven weeks of the 2012 season after undergoing surgery to repair a torn medial meniscus in the same knee.<\/p>\n
Catcher Brayan Pena will make his first career start at first base in Votto’s place for Friday’s contest.<\/p>\n
Mesoraco, out since April 25 due to a strained left hamstring, will hit fifth and be behind the plate for Friday’s game.<\/p>\n
The former first-round pick also sat out the first week of this season while recovering from an oblique strain suffered during spring training, then batted a scorching .468 with three homers, six doubles and 13 RBI in 14 games upon returning to action.<\/p>\n
Cincinnati will head to Washington for three games following its weekend set in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philadelphia, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – The Cincinnati Reds will have catcher Devin Mesoraco back in the lineup for Friday’s opener of a three-game series with the Philadelphia Phillies, though they could be without All-Star first baseman Joey Votto for the entirety of their upcoming road trip. Votto remained in Cincinnati Friday to undergo an MRI on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[118,205,206],"class_list":["post-18832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-cincinnati","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-reds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}