Brewers place LHP Eric Lauer on 15-day IL

The Brewers placed left-hander Eric Lauer on the 15-day injured list due to elbow inflammation. The placement is retroactive to September 8. Right-hander Trevor Kelley was called up to take Lauer’s spot on the active roster.

Milwaukee has essentially gone all season without its rotation at full strength, and the injuries have now started to mount up as the Brewers chase an NL wild-card berth. Lauer joins Freddy Peralta and Aaron Ashby as starters on the IL, leaving the Brew Crew with Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, Adrian Houser, and Jason Alexander as the provisional starting four. No immediate decision needs to be made about a rotation replacement since the Brewers have off-days on both Monday and Thursday, but Triple-A hurler Ethan Small is the only other pitcher currently in the organization who has made a start for Milwaukee this season.

With two solid seasons under his belt now, Lauer has emerged as a stable member of the Brewers rotation. The southpaw has a 3.91 ERA over 145 innings this year, albeit with a below-average 22.8% strikeout rate and 8.6% walk rate. In fact, Statcast metrics across the board weren’t very favorable to Lauer in either 2021 or 2022, and it seems as though Lauer has benefited from a .257 BABIP. His 3.58 ERA since the start of the 2021 season is over half a run lower than his 4.19 SIERA.

Still, the bottom-line results are more than enough for a fourth or fifth starter, and prior to this elbow problem, Lauer had also been a pretty stable source of innings amidst several other injuries that sidelined Milwaukee starters. Losing Lauer and Peralta will further tax an already-struggling Brewers staff — since August 1, Brewers pitchers have a cumulative 1.2 fWAR, the sixth-lowest total of any pitching corps in baseball. This has contributed to the Brewers’ major slide from NL Central contenders to outside the postseason bracket altogether, 3.5 games behind the Phillies for the last wild card slot.