Pence remains day to day with left wrist injury
Cain set to make rehab start for Double-A Richmond on Tuesday
PHILADELPHIA -- Giants right fielder Hunter Pence, who loathes being unable to play, missed his second game in a row on Friday with an injured left wrist. His playing status is day to day.
Pence termed the ailment as tendinitis; manager Bruce Bochy initially referred to it as a bone bruise. Regardless, Pence called the discomfort "something that was not manageable" as recently as a couple of days ago.
Pence said that his wrist improved significantly from Thursday to Friday, prompting Bochy to hold out hope that the Giants' middle-of-the-order dynamo would rejoin the lineup by Sunday. However, Pence emphasized the need for caution.
"I have to get it healed," said Pence, who's batting .282 with two home runs and 13 RBIs in 18 games, "or else it'll go backward again."
Pence hurt himself primarily when he tumbled to the grass after making his running catch on Andrew McCutchen's fifth-inning drive to right-center field Monday against Pittsburgh. Bochy said that Pence felt some discomfort in the wrist before that night. But Pence said that the McCutchen play was the incident "where something happened that wasn't normal."
According to Pence, tests proved that the current injury was not related to the fractured left forearm he sustained in early March, which forced him to miss the season's first 36 games.
• A case of the flu kept leadoff hitter Nori Aoki out of Friday's lineup, though Bochy said that the left fielder would be available to pinch-hit. Aoki has appeared in all but two of San Francisco's previous 55 games.
• Starting next Tuesday for Double-A Richmond against Portland will be the next step in Matt Cain's recovery from a forearm injury. Cain, who threw approximately 40 pitches in an extended spring training game on Wednesday in Scottsdale, Ariz., sounded cautiously optimistic about rejoining the Giants' starting rotation before the All-Star break begins July 13, which is the Giants' fondest wish. "I've still got to get my pitch count up and [get] more repetitions," Cain said.