LOS ANGELES — Late Monday night, Eric Lauer started getting hungry.
Game 3 of the 2025 World Series had gone on so long that the early innings were starting to feel like they belonged to a different game entirely. Remember when Justin Bieber showed up wearing a Shane Bieber jersey? When George Springer grabbed his side and took himself out of the game? When the Toronto Blue Jays still threw Shohei Ohtani anything in the strike zone?
It was all starting to feel like a distant memory and so was Lauer’s pre-game meal. But while some of his teammates snacked between innings, Lauer stayed away from food. It’s not that he wasn’t hungry — but he was holding the Los Angeles Dodgers scoreless and disinclined to mess with what was working.
“No. I was starving,” he said. “But I wasn’t going to change anything. The adrenaline was going to keep me going. I didn’t need any extra fuel.”
Remarkably, Lauer’s system worked. He pitched 4.2 scoreless innings in Toronto’s Game 3 loss to the Dodgers, recording more outs than any Blue Jays pitcher, including starter Max Scherzer. And while Freddie Freeman’s 18th-inning walk-off homer was devastating to the Blue Jays, they wouldn’t have lasted nearly as long without Lauer’s efforts.
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“He’s got some balls on him,” said Davis Schneider, one of three players to bat three times from the Blue Jays’ leadoff spot Monday. “Lauer’s a dawg out there. We have a lot of dawgs on that field. Lauer’s one of them. He came up clutch for sure.”
“He’s great,” added Ernie Clement after the six-hour, 39-minute game had ended. “He’s been awesome all year. I’m happy for him because he’s been through it. And anything we’ve asked of him, he’s done it. It’s not surprising one bit.”
The Blue Jays called on Lauer with one out in the 12th inning in a 5-5 game. After Lauer escaped the 12th, pitching coach Pete Walker would occasionally ask him if he was good to continue. Every time, Lauer would say yes.
“And that’s pretty much where he left it,” Lauer said. “I don’t think I was anticipating going to 18 innings or whatever it was. I don’t think anybody was expecting that. You just roll with it.”
Lauer threw 68 pitches Monday — 50 more than he’d thrown in any other post-season game this month. In fact, it was the first time he’d thrown more than 50 pitches since August, when he did so against the Twins. Yet even if it had been months since he took on a starter’s workload, he embraced the challenge at Dodger Stadium.
“Being a starter forever, I think it’s just ingrained in me,” he said. “The adrenaline helps. It’s the World Series. So yeah, I think length is something I’ve been built for my whole life and something that never really goes away.”
But while he downplayed the challenge of taking on that workload, those who watched Lauer up close did no such thing.
“Pretty unbelievable,” said Jays manager John Schneider.
“Impressive,” said catcher Alejandro Kirk.
“I thought he pitched incredible,” said Kevin Gausman, one of just three Blue Jays who didn’t appear in Game 3, along with Trey Yesavage and Shane Bieber. “You don’t really know exactly what you’re getting yourself into in that spot, but he just kept getting outs, and getting out of big spots and making great pitches. That’s what we’ve seen him do all year
“Now that he’s out in the bullpen it’s a little different, but he’s still that animal out there.”
All told, Lauer covered 4.2 scoreless innings while allowing only two hits and striking out two. He walked four, but that was partly because the Blue Jays chose not to pitch to Ohtani, who reached base a post-season record nine times.
“Individually, I’m glad I could go out there and do my job and put up zeroes,” Lauer said. “But we’d really like to be on the other side of the game.”
An 18-inning game will take a toll on any bullpen and Lauer will presumably be unavailable for at least a couple days after this unexpected spike in usage. But as he pointed out after the Blue Jays’ Game 3 loss, the bullpen might be in better shape than it might first seem given that Mason Fluharty, Louis Varland, Chris Bassitt and Braydon Fisher all threw 20 pitches or fewer.
Resetting mentally after such a taxing loss won’t be easy, but this Blue Jays team prides itself on resilience. As for the physical recovery process, Lauer may have held off on eating a little earlier but he left Dodger Stadium intending to take care of himself as well as possible.
“A lot of sleep,” Lauer said. “Sleep’s probably the most important thing right now. And making sure that everybody’s hydrating well, eating well and just making sure the body’s ready to go.”
