MILWAUKEE -- Center fielder Lorenzo Cain isn’t expected back in the Brewers’ lineup until Thursday’s series finale against Seattle at the earliest, and possibly not until Friday against Pittsburgh, after receiving a cryotherapy treatment and a cortisone injection at the base of his right thumb to ease pain that had become debilitating.
Cain said he consulted with Ryan Braun, who has undergone the same procedure at least five times since the end of the 2014 season.
“It got to the point where I was swinging and missing and I was having problems,” Cain said. “I talked to the trainers, and it was time to get something done. Hopefully, that gets the pain out of there. … I’ve been swinging with pain for close to over a month now. If I can get the pain out of there, it would be huge.”
Cain didn’t pin his diminished performance -- .253/.314/.357 slash line this season compared to .308/.395/.417 last year -- on his thumb, but it surely was a factor, Counsell said. Cain said it even impacted his ability to throw, not just hit.
“Having gone through that, it’s not just fun,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “It makes it hard to have fun. … It just makes you gun-shy a little bit, if that makes sense. You’re trying to avoid the pain. You can see how it would make you do things that you subconsciously don’t really want to do.”
“I’m not going to really blame my thumb for that,” Cain said. “I have to do a better job, regardless of how I feel.”
Cain acknowledged he may need future treatments to eliminate pain in the joint.
Gonzalez return delayed
The Brewers anticipated getting Gio Gonzalez back in the starting rotation before the All-Star break, but that won’t happen after the veteran left-hander felt soreness during and after a mound session on Sunday.
Gonzalez is on the 10-day injured list with inflammation on his shoulder -- “dead arm” in baseball parlance.
“He threw on Sunday, just a little bit of a ‘touch and feel’, and it didn’t go the way we wanted it to,” Counsell said. “So we just backed him off that. He’s going to continue to play catch. We just need to string some good days in a row and then we’ll get back to a bullpen. It does mean post-All-Star break now. It changes his schedule a little bit.”