Halfway through his sophomore season, pitcher Dan Brauer got the sense that all was not well with his left arm.

“It started to get a little bit weaker and it wasn’t recovering like it usually did,” he said.

He pitched through the pain, finishing the 2004 season with a 6-5 record and a 3.02 ERA. He pitched through it in summer league games in the Cape Cod Baseball League and said his arm was doing fine, aside from some lingering soreness.

When he returned to school in the fall, it was a different story.

“(The arm) was really struggling,” Brauer said. “I was losing a lot of velocity, and it was pretty painful.”

Brauer opted for surgery, sitting out the entirety of Northwestern’s 2005 campaign.

“I was pretty well aware that I’d be sitting out all year,” he said. “I was ready for a big year and I just had to sit it out.”

This year Brauer’s back on the hill for NU (3-15) and throwing without pain, but he still has to get more innings under his belt to return to his pre-surgery form.

The junior, who was 11-8 with a 3.21 ERA in his first two years for the Wildcats, has turned in an 0-1 record and a 5.06 ERA through six starts this year.

Brauer said it has taken him a little while to regain the effectiveness of some of his pitches after the hiatus.

“All the rehab throwing was basically all fastballs, so the curveball and the changeup kind of took a little bit longer to get the feel back,” he said. “With each week, I can see an improvement in each of those, which is really encouraging.”

Brauer’s also struggling to find the control he exhibited before the surgery. He is striking out 1.7 batters for every one he walks this year, down from the 2.7 he posted in his first two years.

“The surgery has accomplished a few things,” coach Paul Stevens said, “but he’s still in the process of getting a feel for everything that he hasn’t been able to do for a year.”

While Brauer works to shake off the rust after a year-long break from competitive play, he is helping the team in other ways.

Junior George Kontos, who started only nine games before last season, was thrust into the role of staff ace with Brauer sidelined.

Even though he responded with a team-high five wins, Kontos said he appreciates being able to bear the burden with Brauer’s help this year.

“You can always expect a quality game when (Brauer) pitches,” Kontos said. “He’ll always keep you close and he’ll always give the team a chance to win.”

He added, “(Being the ace) was a maturing process. It was definitely a good thing that I experienced that last year, but it’s also a good thing that Dan’s back now and sharing the pressure a little bit.”

Before the surgery, Brauer was the young gun on the Cats’ staff, learning under J.A Happ and Dan Konecny, both of whom were drafted in 2004.

Now, Brauer has to be the leader for a young staff, one with only 51 collegiate starts combined coming into this season.

Stevens said Brauer is “similar to a Roger Clemens: he’s the arm that makes the rest of the machine go.”

“We had a lot of concerns about where things were going with his rehab and conditioning, as far as his arm coming back,” he added. “But the other side of it is he’s one of those guys that has tremendous intestinal fortitude. Whenever you’ve got that type of an individual around with the ability that he has, you’ve got something special.”

Reach David Morrison at [email protected].