Hellweg learns from rough first Major League outing

PITTSBURGH -- A day later, could Brewers manager Ron Roenicke identify any positives from Johnny Hellweg's anticlimactic Major League debut?

"No, I can't," the manager said simply. "We brought him in today and talked to him, and I was encouraged today in talking to him. He's going to get after it the next outing, and we'll see, with his best stuff, what Major League hitters can do with it. He was disappointed that they never saw his best stuff."

The 6-foot-9 right-hander's first-pitch fastball on Friday registered 87 mph, way off the 102 mph he touched in a start for Triple-A Nashville earlier this season. He eventually got up to 93 mph in a 1-2-3 first inning and touched 97 on a few occasions in the second, but with disastrous results.

Hellweg was charged with seven runs -- five earned, because of a Jean Segura error -- on six hits and two walks, while recording only the first two outs of the second inning. He will try to be more aggressive when he makes his follow-up start on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

"I think there were a couple of positives," Hellweg said. "I saw that if you make a good pitch, a guy hits a groundout. I also saw they hit mistakes. … The pace I tried to set for myself probably wasn't a good idea, trying to build into it. That didn't really work out the way I wanted to."