Eric Lauer is making his Dodgers debut Tuesday night against the Colorado Rockies, one game after Los Angeles opened the series with a 5-3 win and put itself in position to clinch the set before Wednesday’s finale. Kyle Freeland will start for Colorado opposite him.
The Dodgers acquired Lauer earlier this month in a trade with the Toronto Blue Jays, then moved quickly to slot him into a rotation still dealing with the injuries to Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell. The idea was to keep the other five pitchers on their regular schedules, and Brandon Gomes said the club had already done its homework on the left-hander and was eager to help him get back to the form he has shown before.
That form is the part Los Angeles is betting on. Lauer was designated for assignment after posting a 6.69 ERA across 36.1 innings, but he also finished the 2025 regular season with a 3.18 ERA over 104.2 innings and turned in 5.2 scoreless innings in the World Series against the Dodgers. That track record is what made him available, and what made him appealing to a team trying to hold together a staff under strain.
There is still some irony in the matchup. Lauer had already faced the Dodgers in the World Series, and now he joins them at a point when they are trying to put away a familiar division opponent. Los Angeles is 3-2 against Colorado this season after splitting a four-game series last month, so Tuesday’s game is less about surprise than execution: win it, and the series is theirs.
Gomes said the Dodgers would work with Lauer to see what could be adjusted quickly and what might already be part of his game, while stressing that the makeup was strong and the organization expected to help him succeed. That is the balance here. The Dodgers are not asking him to carry the staff, only to stabilize it long enough for the rotation to stay on schedule and for a team with bigger ambitions to keep moving.
For more on the setup, see Rockies-Dodgers: Eric Lauer debuts as Dodgers chase a series-clinching win and Victor Mesa Jr and Dodgers' Logjam: Eric Lauer Set To Debut Tuesday.
