MILWAUKEE -- Eric Lauer was wobbling after two pitches on Tuesday night, and no amount of Dodgers pitching discombobulation was going to change that.

Lauer gave up four runs over 3 2/3 innings in the shortest of his 12 mostly excellent starts against L.A., and the Dodgers persevered despite getting only one inning from starter Noah Syndergaard in a 6-2 Brewers loss at American Family Field.

Through seven starts, Lauer’s ERA is 4.72. Through seven starts last year, his ERA was 2.16.

“Overall, I feel like I’ve been happy with the mechanical side of things and the pitch side of things,” Lauer said. “At this point, it’s more of a confidence thing. It’s wearing on the confidence, and that’s something I need to change between starts a little bit.

“I need to get my head on straight and have the confidence to go out there and make pitches.”

Lauer was asked whether he’s comfortable sharing anything about that process.

“I don’t know if I can say,” he said. “A lot of it is just going to be on me. That’s a nice way of putting it. I need to dig deep and kind of take more control of everything.”

The Dodgers took control early against a left-hander who has long given them fits. Lauer entered 7-1 with a 2.37 ERA in 11 career starts against the Dodgers, including a pair of outings last year in which he allowed two runs in 12 innings.

But a disjointed first inning made clear that was not going to be that type of outing.

Dodgers leadoff man Mookie Betts, who made headlines prior to the game when he told a reporter he was staying at a rental home in Milwaukee rather than with the team at the allegedly haunted Pfister Hotel, drove Lauer’s second pitch for his 39th career leadoff home run.

Lauer then made his own trouble by walking Freddie Freeman, who stole second base, took third on Lauer’s errant pickoff attempt and scored on Will Smith’s deep sacrifice fly.

The Dodgers added a run in the second inning on Miguel Rojas’ two-out single and another in the third on Smith’s solo home run to chase Lauer before he could complete the fourth. He’s surrendered four runs in three consecutive starts, though they were all unearned runs his previous time out in Colorado.

“I don’t think Eric was in a rhythm at all,” manager Craig Counsell said. “The offspeed stuff wasn’t effective tonight, so he was stuck on the fastball a little bit. He had to be.”

Physically, however, Lauer said he’s feeling fine, though he did mention a strange sensation early in Tuesday’s game when his legs felt wobbly. Lauer described it as “a jelly leg kind of thing.”

“I couldn’t tell if they were loose, tight, whatever,” Lauer said. “I was trying to get blood into them because I felt like there was more. I wasn’t pushing well.”

That’s why he was in the clubhouse in the bottom of the first inning, when Milwaukee hitters had to wait to get their first cuts against Syndergaard because the index finger on his right hand was covered with blood from a laceration.

Syndergaard retreated for a quick treatment and kept the Brewers off the scoreboard in the first inning before yielding to seven Dodgers relievers the rest of the way.

The Brewers only did damage against one of them. Rowdy Tellez and Victor Caratini each hit seventh-inning solo home runs off Shelby Miller.

“It looked pretty bad,” Lauer said of Syndergaard. “Like, it looked like a pretty serious amount of blood, so kudos to him for trying to grind through that.”

That put the Dodgers in scramble mode, using all but one of the relievers in manager Dave Roberts’ bullpen. Los Angeles will need innings in Wednesday's series rubber match from their longtime ace, Clayton Kershaw.

But on Tuesday night, Roberts’ relief corps held firm.

“When they got through those middle innings,” Counsell said, “we couldn’t disrupt how they wanted to go the rest of the game, unfortunately.”