HOUSTON — Astros All-Star closer Josh Hader will be shut down from throwing for approximately three weeks after the team announced Friday he has been diagnosed with left shoulder capsule strain.

Hader was placed on the injured list on Monday for the first time in his nine-year major league career because of a shoulder strain. Astros manager Joe Espada said Wednesday that Hader would seek a second opinion before determining a next course of action.

A six-time All-Star, Hader, who is in his second year with the Astros, is 6-2 with a 2.05 ERA and is tied for third with 28 saves in 48 appearances this season.

The Astros entered play on Friday leading the American League West by 1½ games, despite having 13 players on the injured list.

CHICAGO — Mired in a collective offensive slump, the Chicago Cubs are preaching sticking with the process — and not worrying about the results — as a way out of it.

The team has lost three consecutive series for the first time all season, culminating in a 2-1 defeat to the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday when the Cubs failed to push across the tying run in the eighth inning despite having runners on second and third with no outs.

“There’s a tendency to make everything sound worse than it is in our game,” manager Craig Counsell said Friday before facing the Pittsburgh Pirates. “That’s the nature of it when it’s every day.

“Things not going right is not what’s happening. I think that’s what you fall into. This is baseball that’s happening. You have to be tough enough to roll with that.”

Chicago ranks 28th in runs scored since the All-Star break after being at the top of the league for most of the first three months of the season. There’s no single culprit, as most of the top and middle of the order has struggled.

Right fielder Kyle Tucker was asked how to break out of it.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You just figure it out. We play so many games, you just got to get through it at times.”

Tucker is hitting .195 since July 1 with just one home run and four extra-base hits. After jamming his right ring finger on a slide in early June, he finished the month strong but has gone backward since.

The finger is “fine,” Tucker said.

He isn’t the only one struggling. Designated hitter Seiya Suzuki has driven in just eight runs since the break — he had 77 RBIs in the first half — while hitting .182. First baseman Michael Busch is batting .171 since the break, while left fielder Ian Happ is at .228.

But no one has struggled more of late than center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, who had just three hits and 15 strikeouts in August before a second-inning double Friday.

“It becomes the self-inflicted pressure when you feel like you’re not playing your part in contributing,” Crow-Armstrong said before Friday’s game. “When stuff starts to kind of pile up like that, it sucks, but it’s also baseball and I still have however many fricking weeks left this season, and it’s still a lot of time to begin to produce again.”

Counsell added: “Sticking to the things that get you results and being OK it might not happen at that exact time you want it to is the right way to be your best self. I think we have to be consistent with that. For us to focus on results is harmful, so you focus on things that contribute to us being good.”

That’s the collective feeling of the group inside the clubhouse as the Cubs continue to maintain a spot in the wild-card race, even if the division seems as if it could be slipping away. Wins are still coming — just not at the clip they were during the first half. And the club still hasn’t been swept in a three- or four-game series — one of two teams in baseball that can make that claim.

There’s still time to find that offensive groove again as the Cubs look to cut into the Milwaukee Brewers‘ lead in the division while also staving off the Cincinnati Reds in the wild-card race.

“Brewers are hot,” Crow-Armstrong said. “The Reds are playing good baseball. It’s another division matchup [this weekend]. I mean, the Cubbies are the Cubbies. We’re going to go keep playing the same baseball we played all year. … It’s been an interesting two weeks, but we’re fine. I don’t think there’s any worry in the world.”

CINCINNATI — Milwaukee Brewers rookie pitcher Jacob Misiorowski has been activated from the injured list after missing about 2½ weeks with a left tibia contusion.

The move potentially clears the way for the All-Star right-hander to pitch in the NL Central-leading Brewers’ series opener Friday at Cincinnati as they attempt to earn a 13th straight victory, which would match the longest winning streak in franchise history. The Brewers won their first 13 games in 1987.

Misiorowski last pitched July 28 in an 8-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs. Misiorowski’s knee appeared to buckle in the first inning that night as he fielded a dribbler and threw wildly to first base, though he remained in the game and ended up lasting four innings.

He owns a 4-1 record and 2.70 ERA in seven starts. Misiorowski has struck out 47 batters over 33⅓ innings.

In other moves Friday, the Brewers optioned right-handed pitcher Grant Anderson to Triple-A Nashville, placed outfielder Blake Perkins on the bereavement list, put outfielder Isaac Collins on the paternity list, and recalled infielder Tyler Black and outfielder Steward Berroa from Nashville.

Anderson, 28, was 2-3 with a 3.07 ERA in 53 relief appearances with Milwaukee.