CHICAGO -- The Brewers have never fielded that ultimate baseball albatross, the left-handed throwing catcher. But after Josh Hader and Eric Lauer stayed in game shape on the COVID-19 injured list by catching each other’s bullpens, perhaps they have a pair of candidates to fill in for All-Star backstop Omar Narváez.

Or, perhaps not.

“I don’t think we want to,” Hader said.

It certainly was not ideal that the Brewers lost Hader, their All-Star closer, and Lauer, whose solid performance as a sixth starter has afforded others in the rotation some extra rest, on successive days amid a rash of COVID-19 cases. But since both had few or no symptoms, it meant they could help each other stay in shape during the mandatory stint on the IL, which allowed Hader to hit the ground running when he was reinstated on the first day allowed Thursday.

Lauer is eligible to return as soon as Friday, provided he passed medical tests on Thursday. He’s expected to be with the Brewers in Pittsburgh.

“We were fortunate enough to still play catch and stay in tune with our bodies and stay ready,” Hader said. “I think that was the biggest thing. We didn’t waste too much time, from a baseball aspect of things.”

Hader said the Brewers’ manager pulled some strings so the pair could safely use the mound at Craig Counsell Field in Whitefish Bay, Wis. for what Hader indicated were a pair of bullpens on Friday and Tuesday.

As for symptoms, Hader said all he endured was a loss of taste and smell. His sense of taste has since returned, and he was about 50 percent on smell as of Thursday morning, when the Brewers shifted injured reliever John Axford to the 60-day IL and optioned lefty reliever Hoby Milner back to Triple-A Nashville to make room for Hader’s return to active duty.

“The only symptom I had was losing my smell and taste, which was super weird,” said Hader. “But I was fortunate enough to still stay active and not miss too much time activity-wise. The taste part was probably the weirdest part.”

The Brewers lost nine players to the COVID-19 IL over an 12-day stretch from July 27, a day after Christian Yelich tested positive, to Aug. 7, when starter Adrian Houser became the most recent to join the fray. Now, the majority of those players are back, with Lauer expected to join them sometime during this weekend’s series at Pittsburgh. Reliever Jandel Gustave, who’d been quarantined at the team hotel in Atlanta, has been cleared to join the team in Pittsburgh but won’t be activated from the IL immediately, because he needs time to get his arm ready. Houser is believed to need more time to recover.

"As much as anything, we're just getting a really good pitcher back [in Hader], and we're getting really close to full strength in the bullpen there,” manager Craig Counsell said. “So for now, we're past this part of it to get our guys kind of back in order to use them in the ideal circumstances.”

The Brewers have maintained their lead in the National League Central during their spate of positive tests, winning 11 of 15 games from July 27 through Wednesday.

Hader watched from the couch.

“Watching baseball games on TV is definitely not ‘the move,’ but the guys held it down,” Hader said. “That’s what you want. You want guys to step up, and they did. They got their moments. That’s what it’s about -- picking each other up. We weren’t on the field to do that, and they picked me up.”

Now he’s back with a fresh arm. Between a light workload in July because of a lack of save chances, then the IL stint, Hader entered Thursday having pitched only 6 2/3 innings in seven appearances over the previous six weeks.

“I feel good,” he said. “Hopefully, this puts us in a good situation for the back end of the season, and hopefully the playoffs. That’s all I can ask for. Maybe it’s meant to be, getting the time off to put me where I need to be for the back half. Hopefully, we can make this push.”