The Brewers 29-year old captain, Matt Helm, has long been considered a high injury risk and indeed since joining the club in a trade with Charlotte in July of 1971 he has had a series of injuries. But almost always they have been minor, nagging aches and pains of the day-to-day variety. His longest absence from the rotation was in May of 1975 when he was struggling with a strained oblique muscle that kept him out for two weeks.
But in his most recent start on Thursday against San Francisco he was forced to leave after facing just 5 batters, 3 of whom collected hits off of him, and it was revealed yesterday that he has been diagnosed with shoulder inflammation and will likely need to sit out at least 6 weeks to recover. In some ways, it certainly was feared it could be worse. Still, it's tough to be without one of the team's two left-handed starters for that long in the middle of the season.
Cheol-han Lee, who has been making some progress in rehabilitating his season lately, gets moved back into the rotation in Helm's absence. (There was some speculation if this was the moment that #1 prospect Jim Atwell got his first taste of the bigs, but the decision was made to hold off a bit and let him get a bit more AAA experience before making that move.)