SAN FRANCISCO -- Just when Hunter Pence appeared to have freed himself from the grip of injury, his left hamstring grabbed him again.
Nagged by various ailments since 2015, Pence was scratched from the Giants' lineup preceding Tuesday night's 4-3 loss to the Brewers with tightness in his left hamstring -- the same hamstring that put him on the disabled list and forced him to miss 20 games between mid-May and early June.
The Giants had no cause for alarm, since Pence's playing status was listed as day to day. He even pinch-hit for reliever Kyle Crick in the eighth inning and drew a walk.
"He may show up [Wednesday], tell me it's cleared up and he's good to go,'" Giants manager Bruce Bochy said.
More likely, Pence will rest for two days in a row beginning with Wednesday, since Thursday is a scheduled day off. The Giants open a three-game series at Arizona on Friday.
Pence has started 92 of the Giants' 128 games in right field and has appeared in 105 games. By comparison, he played 52 games in 2015 and 106 last year.
After struggling offensively through much of the season's first half, he has hit .333 (25-for-75) with five home runs in his last 22 games. This helped him believe that his game, as well as his health, had stablized.
But he had begun to sense some discomfort in the hamstring -- a "buildup process," as he called it.
"It's starting to get worse and worse," said Pence, who's batting .259 overall. "So I'm trying to get it back to where it's strong and not to a point where it goes way south.
"It had gotten to where it was good for a while. It's just one of those things I'm going to have to figure out a way to manage."