Lauer felt a ‘weird vibe’ with Padres
It wasn’t going to be weird this time around for Eric Lauer before taking the mound at American Family Field on Sunday against the team that drafted him and he made his big-league debut with before trading him away.
That encounter, akin to the awkwardness of seeing your ex in public after a non-amicable breakup, came last May when Lauer faced the San Diego Padres for the first time. In that outing, which came 18 months following the Padres trading Lauer to the Milwaukee Brewers, the lefthander allowed one run over six innings while also homering but said he couldn’t help but feel a bit strange in the build-up to it.
“I already have that one under my belt,” Lauer said prior to his second career start against the Padres. “It’ll be more like a normal game.”
Almost three years later, the trade still gets mentioned without fail whenever the Padres and Brewers meet.
After shaky beginnings, Milwaukee, which sent Trent Grisham and Zach Davies away for Lauer and Luis Urías, is certainly content with its side of the deal as both are key contributors while Grisham has struggled and Davies is in Arizona.
Lauer was San Diego’s first-round draft pick in 2016, broke into the majors in 2018 and made 52 starts with a 4.40 earned run average over two seasons leading up to the trade.
Since, he has found his groove with the Brewers, going 5-1 in 2022 before Sunday’s game with a 2.33 ERA over his last 24 games (23 starts).
He spoke candidly with the Padres in town for a four-game series about the trade and how a different culture in Milwaukee has played a role in his breakout.
Lauer, a native of northwestern Ohio who went to college at Kent State, didn’t always quite fit in to a T in southern California but grew to love San Diego during his time there.
“You always say your first team, it’s like your first love,” Lauer said. “Especially San Diego, it’s really amazing, a beautiful city, it’s easy to fall in love with…”
Lauer paused for a second.
“But then they say it’s very rare to not only make it up with the team you get drafted by, but to stay with one team.”
Still, Lauer was surprised when he got the call in November 2019, one day before he was heading to Hawai’i for a vacation, that he was being traded to the Brewers.
Lauer was starting to feel at home as much as possible in San Diego and felt very comfortable with his teammates when he was dealt. But Lauer also felt that something wasn’t quite right – a “really weird feel, a weird vibe,” as he put it – within the Padres organization. At only 24 years old, he already had two years of bigleague experience and, along with current teammates Urías and Hunter Renfroe, had been one of the team’s top prospects before debuting, but felt a disconnect in the team’s messaging once he reached the majors.
“They were always kind of weird because in the minor leagues they told us all, like, ‘Oh you guys are the future. You’re the next wave. You guys are gonna be the big leaguers we build the team around,’” Lauer said.
Lauer said that soon after his first callup in 2018 the message shifted.
“It was weird because once we got to the big leagues, it was kind of the opposite,” Lauer said. “It was like they didn’t (care) about us. And they didn’t care about developing us.
“So it was a really weird deal. They told you how good you were and then, all of a sudden, you weren’t good anymore if you didn’t produce immediately upon going up to the big leagues.”
Lauer continued but only after mentioning he didn’t want to come across as bashing his former organization; he simply wanted to share his side of the things, he said.
What, specifically, was the disconnect?
“A lot of it’s from the top-down, the way that it feels like they viewed you,” Lauer said. “Because when it constantly feels like you’re constantly being looked down on because you’re either a young guy or people don’t think you know how to do your job, you start to pick up on that vibe.”
Lauer was initially worried that he would feel the same thing in Milwaukee but found that not to be the case when his first conversation with the Brewers coaching staff was all about how to understand his style of communication and what makes him tick.
“I came over here and it was the complete opposite,” Lauer said. “It was like, ‘Oh this guy knows what he’s doing.’ I was like, ‘Thank you, yes I do.’ I’ve been doing this long enough to where I think I should have a little respect.
“There was a little relief when I saw how it was coming over here and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going from a team that I didn’t feel valued on to a team that I feel like they actively sought me out so I have value to them. I felt more value coming over here than when I was with (San Diego).
“Even though they said, ‘You guys are the studs coming up, we drafted you guys,’ but it didn’t feel that way getting to the big leagues. Over here it actually felt like it.”
Lauer harbors no ill will toward the Padres. They were, after all, the team that gave him first first shot and nabbed him as their opening day starter in 2019. Plus, he added at the end of the chat, things have worked out pretty well since coming over to Milwaukee.
It’s a place where Lauer undoubtedly feels at home and has steady communication from top to bottom in the organization. That wasn’t quite the case, he felt, in San Diego.
“What they told me when I was traded was that the only way they could get the deal done was if they put me in the deal,” he said. “I was like, ‘Okay well that makes it sound like the Brewers really wanted me. (The Brewers) said to them it was no deal unless you were in it. We really didn’t want to give you up.
“But I was kind of like, ‘Bullshit that you didn’t want to. Or else you wouldn’t have.”