Michael Brantley still hitting off a tee

All-Star outfielder’s slow recovery from injury to shoulder in 2015 confounds the Indians

“This kid has worked his butt off. We just need to be patient and allow him to try to get to the point where he can not only come back, but stay back.” – Tribe manager Terry Francona

On Aug. 15 of last year, the Indians optimistically announced Michael Brantley would fully recover in four months after undergoing right biceps tendinitis surgery.

Six months have passed since the operation. Brantley is hitting a baseball off a tee, as he has been since late December. He still isn’t ready to face live pitching. Before that he has to get clearance to swing at pitches tossed softly. Manager Terry Francona has already decided to hold Brantley out of early spring training games.

All the Indians can do is wait and hope.

“By all accounts, he’s doing everything,” Francona told reporters at the Tribe’s spring training complex in Goodyear, Arizona, on Feb. 15. “This kid has worked his butt off. We just need to be patient and allow him to try to get to the point where he can not only come back, but stay back.”

It has been a perplexing, maddening, aggravating, confounding 18 months for the Indians and

their All-Star left fielder. Brantley injured his right (non-throwing) shoulder on Sept. 22, 2015, diving for a fly ball in Minnesota, and he hasn’t been right since. He has had three surgeries, an anti-inflammatory injection and a cortisone shot from Nov. 9, 2015, through the Aug. 15 procedure last summer.

The Indians were cautious with Brantley last spring, too. He started the 2016 season on the 15-day disabled list after playing in only two spring training games. His season started on April 25 and ended on May 9 — 11 games, nine hits in 39 at-bats, no home runs and seven RBI. This from a player who had 200 hits in 2014 and 164 in 2015. He drove in 181 runs and scored 162 those two seasons.

It is impossible to know how the 2016 World Series would have unfolded had Brantley been in the lineup, but it’s easy to dream the ending would have been happier. Now the dream is to have Brantley healthy again, hitting third with Edwin Encarnacion on deck and Jason Kipnis and/ or Francisco Lindor already on base.

“I feel better than I did a year ago,” Brantley said during Tribe Fest last month. “I’m happy where I am. There are still hurdles to cross in the process and I’m looking forward to tackling them.”

Brantley, Francona and everyone involved was convinced they were following the proper protocol last year, but every time it seemed Brantley was finally back to his pre-injury form, there was another setback. Hence the anti-inflammatory shot, the cortisone shot and a procedure July 22 to break up scar tissue from

the original Nov. 9 surgery to repair the torn labrum.

“We did the process exactly as we were asked to do,” Francona said at Tribe Fest. “Every time we got him into games, something would flare up on him. He never skipped a step. He passed all his milestones. He just ran into problems when he’d get into a game.

“It confounded us a lot. I don’t know what we could have done differently. Our medical people spent so much time trying to think of what was the right thing with Michael.”

Brantley is left-handed, so he has no problem throwing. He can stay in shape by running. All that is good, but Brantley learned last year what summer is like without baseball. He does not want to experience that again.

“When’s something’s taken away from you that you love so much, especially with the group of guys we have here, it’s like a family,”

Brantley said. “You just want to be back out there with your family at full strength and help them win some baseball games.”

Encarnacion was the marquee signing for the Indians in the offseason. Getting Brantley back at his best would be like adding another free-agent bat to the lineup.

“Having him back in the lineup would be about as good an addition as you can have to a team in an offseason,” General Manager Mike Chernoff said after the news conference announcing the signing of Edwin Encarnacion. “We’re certainly optimistic about that. Sometimes you forget that as you’re putting the team together and thinking he was here last year; he played in only 11 games.”

The Indians hope Brantley will be ready for the season opener April 3 against the Rangers, but they won’t rush anything in the rehab process.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE The Indians’ Michael Brantley, shown here with team president Chris Antonetti, will not appear in any early spring training games.