A couple years ago, Eric Lauer was trying to rediscover his identity as a pitcher.

All it took to find it: Three months … and 6,000 miles.

If you were familiar with Lauer’s name when the Dodgers acquired him in a trade last week, it was probably from his early years as a former first-round draft pick with the Padres.

Or his peak seasons with the Brewers in 2021 and 2022, when he won 18 games and had a 3.47 ERA.

Or his career revival last fall as a member of the Blue Jays, pitching to a 3.18 ERA as a rotation/long-relief swingman on the American League pennant-winners, before delivering 4 ⅔ scoreless innings in the marathon third game of the World Series against the Dodgers.

Amid all that, however, there was a time the now 30-year-old left-hander wondered if his MLB career was coming to an early end.

“Somebody last year was like, ‘When are you gonna write your book?’” Lauer quipped in an interview with the California Post this week, ahead of his Dodgers debut on Tuesday night against the Colorado Rockies.

“I was like, ‘About what?’ And they said, ‘Just all your adventures.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, you know, it has been pretty crazy.’”

“Just a whirlwind,” he later added.

The cliff notes version of the tale goes like this: In 2023, Lauer’s performance plummeted amid a wave of confounding injuries. He had bursitis in both shoulders. He was battling nerve compression in his forearm. And after a year-long process to finally get healthy, he found he “almost had to relearn” his mechanics on the mound.

So, following that dismal 2023 campaign with the Brewers (when he had a 6.56 ERA in 10 MLB outings), and short triple-A stints in 2024 in the Astros’ and Pirates’ organizations (where his ERA was over 5.00), he took a leap of faith at an international opportunity.

That August, he signed with the Kia Tigers of the KBO League in South Korea.

Initially, Lauer said he was hesitant about going. It was a massive change. It came with no long-term promises. It offered no certainty about reviving his big-league dreams.

But at that point in his career, the crafty southpaw saw it as a reset.

“When I went over there, they gave me so much reassurance and confidence in myself that I was good,” he recalled. “Because for probably a year and a half straight, I was told, ‘If you’re not throwing 95, you’re not any good.’ So I started to kind of believe that.”

Throwing 95 mph, after all, is not something Lauer ever did consistently, even in his best years in the majors.

Instead, his success has long been predicted on mixing up his stuff and moving the ball around, keeping hitters off-balance with pristine command and an unpredictable six-pitch attack. 

It was a style that had frustrated the Dodgers over the years (Lauer has a career 2.90 ERA against them) and taught him the value of pitching over simply throwing gas.

“I’m not throwing 98,” he said. “But I can throw enough off-speed pitches and throw them in the correct spots to where my fastball will then look like it’s 98. That’s what I get a lot from hitters, is like, ‘Your fastball is invisible when you throw it, because everything else plays off it so well.’ That’s what made me good. And they gave me that reassurance over there.”

Indeed, upon arriving in Korea, Lauer flourished in the KBO’s “old-school” style of play.

Leadoff hitters were contact/speed guys. Bottom-of-the-order bats were tough outs trying to get on base. And while mistakes might not be so thunderously punished –– “the four hitter was just a straight power donkey,” Lauer joked, “but everyone else is just kind of playing their role” –– executing a game plan became an instructive, strategic task.

“It was good to kind of go back to what made me good originally,” said Lauer, who helped the Tigers win a KBO title that year. “How to navigate a lineup. What to do to certain guys.”

As a foreign player, Lauer said the Tigers’ coaching staff also gave him the freedom to iron out his delivery.

“I got basically three months to work myself through things, think myself through things, and try different things,” he said. “Nobody could really tell me, ‘No.’ So it allowed me to tinker and play around to the point where I got to that comfortability with my mechanics again. It was like, ‘Alright, now all I got to do is step on it.’”

And when he returned to MLB last year, that’s exactly what he did.

After signing with the Blue Jays and beginning 2025 in triple-A, Lauer quickly re-established himself in the big leagues.

He had a 9-2 record. He posted a career-best 2.2 wins-above-replacement, according to Baseball Reference.

And after giving up three runs in his first outing of the postseason, he pitched 8 ⅓ scoreless frames over the rest of the playoffs.

This year, Lauer has endured renewed struggles.

His velocity ticked down (from 91.7 mph to 90.4 mph). His ERA climbed to 6.69 (thanks in part to owning one of the league’s highest home run rates).

On an injury-riddled Blue Jays pitching staff, he also expressed some frustration with his usage, especially after an outing in Arizona last month when an opener was used in front of him.

Last week, he clarified such complaints, saying there was “no ill will” or “hurt feelings” between him and the Blue Jays.

But in hindsight, he later told the California Post, he started “feeling like I was looking over my shoulder” regarding his role on the team.

“It started to get in my mind a little more than I would like to admit it did,” he added.

Now, he’s getting a fresh start with the Dodgers, who acquired him for cash considerations after he was designated for assignment by the Blue Jays this month.

“The main thing is him just going out and competing,” said Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior, who once worked with Lauer in the Padres farm system. “Like with anybody, we will try to get to [some delivery and pitch-sequencing adjustments] in an appropriate time. But we want him to be focused on making pitches, attacking hitters, and do some things that will hopefully pay dividends in his first start.”

Expectations, of course, are abundantly modest. For now, Lauer is simply a placeholder with Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell out injured.

Then again, he has faced more daunting circumstances in his bid to prolong his career.

He still feels like he knows who he is as a pitcher. Tuesday night will offer a new chance to prove it.