Eric Lauer and the Brewers Have to Survive Together

It's been a difficult start to the season for Eric Lauer. Something isn't right. His velocity is down over two miles per hour, relative to 2022, and is currently the lowest of his career. Every pitch in his repertoire has been dinged.

That's a worrying sign, for the obvious two reasons. Firstly, it implies that Lauer might not be fully healthy. That's not the only reason why a pitcher might lose power this way, but it's certainly the most salient. Given the long-term questions about the health of Brandon Woodruff. the team can ill afford to lose Lauer, too. Even now, their rotation is beginning to stretch a bit thin, and fifth starter Wade Miley is no paragon of durability. Lauer has to be part of the bridge between Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta starts, even if he's not going to approximate their performance.

Secondly, of course, less velocity typically means less effectiveness. Lauer is walking hitters at virtually the same rate as he did over the past two seasons, but his strikeout rate has dropped by three percentage points. Opponents are whiffing less often on all five of his pitches, and hitting all five of them harder than they did last year. It's practically miraculous that Lauer has managed to muddle through with a 4.30 ERA to this point.

Practically miraculous, perhaps, but not truly so. There's a real tweak at work, one that has helped Lauer avert total disaster in a moment of crisis. His fastball isn't fast enough, and it won't stay out of the middle of the plate. Opponents are spotting his slider and his curveball out of the hand. He has no feel for his changeup, and has virtually given up on it. Into the void left by all that derelict stuff, Lauer has stuffed a whole bunch of cutters.

Against lefties, all the cutter has to do is play off his four-seamer. If he can get hitters not to obliterate that straight heat, he can then show them the cutter, looking enough like the fastball to induce a fastball-speed swing. That leads to some balls off the end of the bat, and explains why Lauer has gotten better results with that pitch than with his other principal weapons this year. 

He's also using the pitch more against righties, although less dramatically so.

The slider really has gone missing for Lauer this year. He's tried to reshape it into something more akin to his curveball, but it's not working. What is working, though, is the cutter, which has lost more velocity than his fastball and now has greater vertical separation from that pitch, too. 

With the cutter, Lauer can get in on righties and prevent them from looking to extend their arms and do maximum damage on the four-seamer. It's far from a perfect plan, but it's kept him afloat during this brutal stretch. As long as he commands the pitch over the inner half, he can make it a key part of his attack.

For the first time this season, the Brewers have lost two consecutive games. Going back to the start of this homestand, they've lost three out of four. They're still sporting a fantastic overall record, but the Pirates have kept pressure on them within the division, and the injury trouble the team has already encountered makes their success feel a bit fragile. On Tuesday, Lauer has to keep the anemic Detroit offense in check, so that the team can get off the schneid and back on track. Thereafter, the team needs to see him regain some his velocity and settle into the kind of tenuous but tenable rhythm he established in each of the last two seasons.