SAN FRANCISCO -- Perhaps what happened to Jimmy Nelson in the fifth inning, when he lost the strike zone and sparked a Giants comeback in an 8-7 Brewers loss on Saturday at Oracle Park, is just another part of the process for a player coming back from a major shoulder repair.
Nelson, though, has grown weary of that concept. He is ready for the payoff.
“You preach ‘the process,’ but I’m two years into this process and it gets pretty tiring just having to always try to look at the bright side of things,” Nelson said.
That was the position into which he was forced again against San Francisco, after Nelson and the Brewers built a 5-1 lead against Madison Bumgarner through four promising innings only to see it slip away beginning in the fateful fifth. Nelson issued three walks to start a three-run Giants rally that didn’t require a single hit, part of a late-inning surge that guaranteed the Brewers a second series defeat in as many weeks to a National League cellar-dweller.
Nelson has absorbed losses in each of those series against MLB’s two least potent offenses, the Marlins and Giants. In a pair of starts separated by 10 days, Nelson was charged with nine runs (eight earned) on nine hits and six walks in seven innings. Both times, he has appeared to hit a wall, though both Nelson and Brewers manager Craig Counsell disputed that characterization of Saturday’s momentum-shifting fifth inning.
On June 5 against the Marlins at Miller Park, it happened in the third, when Nelson bookended a double with a pair of walks and Miami’s Brian Anderson made him pay with a grand slam. On Saturday the game-changing inning was the fifth, when Nelson missed the strike zone with 12 of 13 pitches while walking the first three batters -- beginning with Bumgarner on four pitches -- and exited after throwing exactly half of his 72 pitches for strikes. Adrian Houser took over and walked Brandon Belt on five pitches to make it 5-2. Pablo Sandoval followed with a run-scoring groundout and Stephen Vogt with a sacrifice fly to make it a one-run game.
The Brewers lost the lead an inning later, then pushed back ahead, then lost it again for good in the seventh and lost for the third time in four games to begin this road trip.
Asked what he thought went wrong, Nelson said, “I walked three guys. I was just throwing balls. You can’t do that. I didn’t feel fatigued. I wasn’t sore or tired. I was just simply not doing my job right there.”
Catcher Manny Pina’s theory?
“I don’t know for sure, but what I saw that last inning, his tempo slowed down,” Pina said. “He was going quick, he wasn’t shaking me off, and then the last inning, he said yes but was slowed down. I think he was a little tired in the last inning.”
Counsell saw it differently.
“I thought he had pitched really, really well for four innings. He was really on top of things,” Counsell said. “It’s not a mechanical thing; I don’t believe it is. I would definitely say it’s not hitting a wall. We’re at 60 pitches going out there. He’s done way more than that in several games [in the Minor Leagues] this year, with good results in those innings. I don’t think it’s that at all.”
Friday began a stretch of 23 games in 24 games for the Brewers leading to the All-Star break, so “we need five guys,” said Counsell of his starting rotation. They are actually considering using six during the stretch, though nothing is set at the moment beyond Brandon Woodruff’s next start on Tuesday in San Diego.
“We’ve got a lot of good arms in the rotation and in the ‘pen, so whatever capacity I’m used, I just want to do my job,” Nelson said. “Whenever I have an inning like that -- especially after I’m at 60 or whatever pitches -- it’s not a fatigue thing. It’s not anything else other than me doing my job, and that really [upsets me] because I felt like today might have been a day I could have gone seven innings or something like that and been able to save some of our guys out of the ‘pen.”
Christian Yelich and Manny Pina homered for Milwaukee, but the biggest day belonged to Vogt, the former Milwaukee catcher who tallied three hits, two runs scored and two RBIs for the Giants. Vogt rehabbed his own shoulder injury last season alongside Nelson and forged a bond with the Brewers hurler. They still talk a couple times each week, and Vogt said he was “kind of conflicted” as he prepared to face his friend.
They smiled at each other after Nelson snared Vogt’s line drive for the final out of the first inning.
“Today was a big day for Jimmy and I,” Vogt said. “He's overcome so much adversity just to get back on the mound, and he looked great the first four innings today. Thankfully, we won. Now I wish him all the luck in the world as he moves forward.”