Milwaukee Brewers: Expectations for Jimmy Nelson should be tempered

It’s a fantastic sight to see Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Jimmy Nelson back on the mound, but as we head to the regular season, fans need to lower their expectations for his return.

It has been a long and difficult road to recovery for Jimmy Nelson, but he can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was during the Milwaukee Brewers playoff push in August of the 2017 season that Nelson would suffer his injury and hasn’t pitched in a regular season game since.

Unlike most injuries that happen to pitchers, Nelson’s occurred while on the base paths as a runner. In an attempt to slide back into first base, he would severely injure his should in what can only be called a freak accident. This resulted in a partially torn labrum and a strained rotator cuff in his throwing shoulder.

With an unknown injury such as this, the Milwaukee Brewers have been very cautious and the rehab process has taken much longer than most would have originally anticipated. However, just recently Nelson has thrown in two live Spring Training games and a return this season is imminent.

Nelson has covered four innings over two games this spring, but it was his three-inning performance against the Colorado Rockies that sticks out. In that appearance, he would allow two hits, one earned run and no walks. While there were a couple of hard hit baseballs that ended up as outs, overall there were a number of positives to take away from this outing. But perhaps the most important take away was that Nelson hit 95 mph on the radar gun, letting us know that his velocity is returning.

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An issue with an injury such as this is the unknown. With Tommy John surgery, for example, a quite common injury amongst pitchers, everyone knows where the player will be at in the rehab process every step of the way and what to expect when they return to the mound. In Nelson’s case, because it was such a fluke injury, nobody fully knows how he will return.

The last time we saw Nelson in the regular season was in 2017 where he had emerged as the Milwaukee Brewers ace of the staff and was poised to maintain that role for the foreseeable future. Prior to his injury, Nelson had thrown 175.1 innings, held a 3.49 ERA, a 1.249 Whip and had struck out nearly 200 batters.

While we all hope that Nelson can return to that form, given the injury he suffered and the amount of time off, expectations from fans need to be lowered as we just may not see this type of performance, and most likely not right away.

Over his career, Nelson has a 4.14 ERA, with a 1.353 WHIP, and averages 8.1 strikeouts per nine innings pitched, all of which are not nearly as good as what we saw from him in 2017. So this begs the question, was Nelson taking a big step forward in 2017 or was he just having an above average season? The correct answer is that we don’t know yet.

There will also be some rust for Nelson to shake off, which makes starting him in the minors this season a great idea by the Milwaukee Brewers. This will help ease him back into his role as he is able to work through issues that pop up against lower level competition. However, at this time, we do not know how long he will be in the minors. If all goes well and there are no setbacks it may just be a few weeks, or it could be a few months. As mentioned above, the most difficult aspect in all of this is the unknown.

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When Nelson does return to the Milwaukee Brewers, he may struggle initially and I’ve heard a number of times that his return will be like “adding an ace to the rotation” but realistically there is no guarantee that he will find his 2017 form again.

From the limited action that we’ve seen thus far, there is a lot of promise and plenty to be excited about in regards to Nelson’s return, but expectations need to be tempered moving forward.

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