For a 20-year-old Eric Lauer, fresh out of Kent State University in 2016, talking pitching with Mark Prior made the big leagues feel closer.
“We were so young,” Lauer said in a conversation with The Times, “that it was kind of funny, because everybody was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s Mark Prior.’ ”
Prior, the beloved former Cubs All-Star, finished third in NL Cy Young voting when Lauer was 8 years old.
“He was one of the first experiences I had where I was like, ‘OK, like, these elite big leaguers are just normal guys. They’re just like us.’ ”
Prior was a “high-level thinker,” as Lauer put it, who steered Lauer toward in-depth self-evaluation. But he also was just “a normal dude.”
The two have reunited with the Dodgers. Lauer — who held the Rockies to one run and four hits in his six-inning Dodgers debut Tuesday — was a midseason addition as injuries thinned the team’s starting pitching depth. Prior has been on the Dodgers’ coaching staff since 2018, serving as the pitching coach since the 2020 season.
But when they first met, Lauer was a Padres 2016 first-round draft pick and Prior was the minor-league pitching coordinator.
“He’s always been an uber-competitor, obviously pitched off his fastball, sneaky,” Prior said. “And then I saw him, obviously, when he got called up with the Padres. And he’s pitched well against us at various times, and it’s been a really good career together.”
When they connected last week — at the Padres’ Petco Park, as fate and the Dodgers’ schedule would have it — they had a whole range of career phases to catch up on.
Lauer has gone through delivery adjustments and career leaps. He debuted with the Padres in 2018, was traded to the Brewers ahead of 2020, revived his career with a 2024 stint in Korea, returned to MLB and won the American League pennant with the Blue Jays.
“I would say I’m much more mature now,” Lauer said. “But as a pitcher, I’ve gone through mechanical changes, arm action changes. And [Prior] knew me when I was really, really long.”
On their first day back in the same organization, Lauer said to Prior: “I’m not comping with [Madison] Bumgarner anymore.”
Bumgarner famously would reach way back at the beginning of his motion. Lauer at one time had a similar arm path.
“I used to be really, really long,” Lauer said, “and then I got really, really short, and now I’m kind of in between. And so we just talked about that, and what caused that, and what the process was to do all that, and then kind of where I want to be now.”
They landed on shorter arm action, but the trick will be syncing that up with the lower half of his delivery. And the Dodgers have dug into his pitch usage and arsenal.
“I haven’t been involved in Lauer’s path for eight years, so I don’t know all the iterations,” Prior said. “… But at least there’s a relationship there to some degree, it’s a friendly face.”
That was one of Lauer’s first thoughts when he found out the Dodgers had traded for him after the Blue Jays designated him for assignment.
“I was like, ‘Oh shoot, Prior’s the pitching coach there,’” Lauer recounted. “I know this guy, I can talk to him right away, it’s not somebody that I have to learn how they operate. … It was nice to [have a] full-circle moment and just happened to be in San Diego.”
Lauer had climbed through the Padres’ system, with Prior overseeing the minor-league pitching department, as part of a group that would inspire the “hot talent-lava” motto — a phrase originally coined by baseball superagent Scott Boras. Though Lauer’s career has taken twists and turns since, those were formative years.
“They taught us that you’re never done really learning to pitch,” Lauer said. “It’s a constant adjustment. As you get older, you have to change some things, and you have to tweak some things when your body doesn’t move the same as when you’re 21 compared to 28. So that idea stuck with me throughout.”
It’s been clear in Lauer’s short time with the Dodgers that he’s still evolving.
The former Toronto Blue Jay, who shoved against the Dodgers in the World Series, warmed up on the Dodger Stadium mound to “squabble up” by Kendrick Lamar, a Compton native who famously torched Toronto native Drake in their 2024 feud.
After a clean first inning with two strikeouts, Lauer missed down the middle with a fastball to Hunter Goodman, who hit it out for the 12th homer Lauer has given up this season.
On a night littered with Dodgers home runs, however, that was the only run Lauer gave up, as he mowed down the Rockies for the next four innings.