Pitcher Nelson transitioning to new role on sideline after his shoulder surgery

Back from his season-ending shoulder surgery, Jimmy Nelson has transformed himself from ace starting pitcher to head cheerleader as the Milwaukee Brewers continue their fourgame series against the Chicago Cubs at Miller Park.

"Yeah, basically," Nelson said before Friday's game, three days removed from having his anterior labrum and posterior capsule repaired by well-known surgeon Neal ElAttrache of the Kerlan-Jobe Clinic in Los Angeles.

"I was in the locker room last night. It was a crazy game to watch. I definitely want to be with these guys. I'd just be bored at home. Plus, we have a good vibe here with all the guys in the clubhouse and what we've built since spring training.

"It's definitely fun. Just because this happened, I didn't want this to keep me from seeing it play out the last few weeks."

Seated in the Brewers' dugout with his right arm in a massive sling, Nelson provided reporters with additional details about the injury and procedure that was necessitated by his awkward, head-first slide back into first base at Wrigley Field

on Sept. 8.

Nelson pitched one more inning after jamming his shoulder before being lifted from a game Milwaukee went on to win, 2-0, sparking an eventual three-game sweep of Chicago.

He finished the season at 12-6 with a 3.49 ERA and 199 strikeouts in 29 starts.

"(ElAttrache) told me I dislocated it," Nelson said. "There's a lot of guys who have dislocations in football, so that's the only thing I can think of. Football guys, they'll tear their labrum a lot. The only reason I can think of is because they have so much force in front of them, it dislocates the same kind of direction as mine did.

"It took a couple of hours. He actually said he enjoyed doing it, so that it was cool. He said it was a little different. I think he enjoyed doing it because it wasn't your normal wear-and-tear injury. It was an acute injury. It's not like it was from years and years of throwing.

"It was a random incident. The clean-up and stuff was a little different from a normal throwing injury."

Nelson added he encouraged ElAttrache to be proactive heading into the procedure if need be.

"Coming back, I didn’t want anything to be an issue down the road and then it just takes more time," he said. "I just wanted to take care of everything we needed to take care of up front and if that means a couple extra months of rehab and recovery or whatever it may be, just to insure that it’s not an issue down the road, I definitely liked that option.

"I’m looking at the big picture here."

General manager David Stearns said Wednesday that Nelson was expected to miss a "chunk" of 2018 but the expectation was that he would return at some point. Nelson, who will be in a sling for the next few weeks before embarking on a rehab program that he estimated would last five to six months, wouldn't guess when he might rejoin the rotation.

"I don’t know. I have no clue," he said. "That’s something, where I have my follow-up in L.A. the last couple days of the season, (ElAttrache) will talk more about the rehab process and we’ll have more of a timeline then.

"You hear all the time about guys that go in and it’s a year rehab, and all of a sudden the guy’s back in eight-nine months and people are like, ‘Oh my God.’ There’s instances where guys have taken longer and guys have finished

the whole process a lot earlier.

"Different people recover differently, so it’s kind of hard to put a for sure timeline on it."

Nelson also said it's yet to be determined where he will rehab. He lives and trains in Tomball, Texas, and there's the potential he could do at least part of it there. The team typically rehabs most of its injured players at its spring and minor-league headquarters in Arizona.

Already well-known for his intensity and focus, Nelson said he'll attack his recovery whenever he's allowed.

"I’m not worried about the rehab at all. I know I’ll dominate the rehab," he said. "These next few weeks, it’s a lot of rest and recovery stuff, in the sling a lot. That’s going to be the hard part for me, being a naturally anxious person.

"I’ve just got to focus on that right now."