MILWAUKEE -- Craig Counsell strode to the mound with purpose in the first inning on Thursday. Jimmy Nelson had just gone walk, single, hit batsman, walk in a four-batter span to force home a run. The manager delivered a few sharp words, then left just as quickly as he came.

“‘Don’t think, just pitch,’ was the message,” Counsell said.

• Box score

Everyone -- from Counsell to Nelson to the men watching from the dugout and up in the general manager’s suite -- hoped this would be the night Nelson shed “the process” that guided his long road back from shoulder surgery and returned to getting results. But it was not to be. Two batters after the visit, Jose Iglesias bounced a two-run single up the middle. Four innings after that, Iglesias connected against Nelson for a two-run home run, and the Reds were on their way to a 7-1 win in the opener of a four-game series at Miller Park.

Christian Yelich continued to be a one-man highlight reel for Milwaukee, blasting the Brewers’ hardest (114.2 mph off the bat) and farthest (Statcast-projected 462 feet) home run of the season in the fourth. Yelich leads the Majors with 28 home runs, has hit safely in 17 straight games to match his career high and has hit the team’s longest homer of the year in consecutive games.

But as was the case for much of the team’s just completed road trip -- Yelich hit .378 with three homers in eight games out west but the team went 2-6 -- the rest of the club was quiet. On Thursday the Brewers played from behind after Nelson yielded three runs in a 31-pitch first inning and five runs on seven hits in five innings overall, with four walks (one intentional) and five strikeouts.

“Words can’t explain how frustrating and upsetting and disappointing it is,” said Nelson. “There’s nobody that’s more frustrated about it than I am, I promise you that. I’m also doing everything, along with our coaching staff and even some of the guys here in our clubhouse, between starts to figure things out. Whether it’s a physical standpoint or a mental standpoint, I really have been trying to attack things from all angles.

“Trust me, I’m ready to come out the other side of it and be consistently effective.”

Nelson's ERA after three starts is 9.75. He has been charged with 14 runs (13 earned) on 16 hits in his first 12 innings back from losing parts of three years to a major shoulder injury that required rehab. He has 13 strikeouts to 10 walks so far.

Does Nelson need to continue to pitch in the Majors to get through this? Or would he benefit from being optioned back to the Minor Leagues for a stretch?

“That's something we're going to have to discuss,” Counsell said. “We need production. We need results. You have to earn your way into getting innings … We need guys that are going to help us win. Jimmy’s not pitching because we need to let him pitch. He’s pitching because we think he can help us win.”

After pitching predominantly off his fastball in his first two starts against the Marlins and Giants, Nelson put his curveball at the forefront of his arsenal on Thursday. Fifty-two of his 94 pitches were curves, including a pair in the fifth inning with two outs against Yasiel Puig and Iglesias. Puig hit one for a triple. Iglesias hit one for a two-run homer that bounced off the top of the wall in left field and into the Brewers bullpen for a 5-1 Cincinnati lead.

The high percentage of breaking balls was by design, Nelson said -- in part because he was not commanding his fastball and in part as a reaction to recent changes in the game. Even pitchers who throw 95 mph and up, as Nelson did before his injury, are throwing a higher percentage of offspeed, he said.

“I expect a lot more out of myself. Five innings, five runs is not acceptable,” Nelson said. “There was some bad contact, but there were a couple [instances] of good contact, too, that was my fault. The two-run homer, I thought he got it off the end and it kept going. That one kind of surprised me, I thought that was a flyout to left. I probably would have felt a little bit better about it if I got to put up a zero there at the end.”

That’s been a struggle for Brewers pitchers lately. In the past week, while the team lost six of seven games, Milwaukee’s starters have a 7.47 ERA.

“We just have to bear down,” Counsell said. “We’re going through a tough patch right now, a tough stretch. We’ve got to outlast it and out-tough it, out-compete it. There’s too much to play for and too much to look forward to and too many other good things happening for a week stretch to change our opinion or our outlook on what’s going on here.”