Let’s Check In on Brandon Lowe

Back in the days before Junior Caminero — even in the days before Wander Franco — there was Brandon Lowe, a 5-foot-10 second baseman who anchored the Tampa Bay Rays’ lineup during its most fecund period. As the Rays made the playoffs five years in a row from 2019 to 2023, and won the pennant in 2020, Lowe was at the center of it. He posted a 151 wRC+ in 2020, and a year later he hit 39 home runs.

That’s tied for the second-most homers in a season in Rays history, up among a bunch of guys (Carlos Pena, Logan Morrison, Jose Canseco) who are so big they could fit Lowe in their jacket pocket.

Now, as Caminero is bashing his way into the everyday lineup, Lowe is at an inflection point in his career. He’s struggled to stay healthy the past three years, and he turns 31 in July. And because everything the Rays touch has to be viewed through this lens: Lowe is in the final guaranteed season of his seven-year contract. His 2026 club option is quite affordable, even for Tampa Bay ($11.5 million), but there’s only one option year.

Given that the Rays are inveterately unsentimental about players in this position, there was some brief trade speculation earlier this offseason. It never got far, but the Rays are in a tough division, and it wouldn’t take much to turn them into sellers in the midseason trade market.

So with that in mind: What is Lowe now, and what should the Rays do with a guy who’s anchored their lineup since the late 2010s?

From a developmental perspective, it’s hard to think of a player who’s more of his time than Lowe: an undersized college second baseman who started putting up absurd fly ball rates in the late 2010s, just as the swing plane revolution was at its peak and the ball was at its juiciest. Conditions are no longer ideal for that kind of player, but even while battling persistent back and core injuries over the past three seasons, Lowe has still been a very good hitter.

Since 2022 — so, the worst three seasons of Lowe’s career — the former Maryland star has hit .234/.317/.440. That line doesn’t look particularly pretty, but it’s a wRC+ of 116. If you take Lowe’s stats over the past three seasons, he’s averaged 3.0 WAR and 27 home runs per 150 games played. That’d be well above-average production for a starting second baseman — think Brendan Donovan with twice as many home runs and strikeouts.

There are three questions I have about Lowe: First, can his body hold up as he gets older? Second, does his approach still play in 2025? And, if the answer to one or both of the above questions is no, what do the Rays have in the pipeline if they decide to move on?

Over the past two seasons, Lowe has barely broken the 100-game and 400-plate appearance markers. Believe it or not, that 39-dinger campaign in 2021 was the only year in which Lowe has batted more than 450 times in a season, or played 110 or more games.

Not all of Lowe’s injuries have been worrisome in the long term; in 2023, he suffered a season-ending injury when he fouled a ball off his knee hard enough to fracture his patella. To some extent, injuries like this are unavoidable. Every player gets dinged and nicked by foul balls or errant pitches, or runs into walls and teammates. Sometimes you take a couple Tylenol and shake it off; other times, you end up in a cast for eight weeks.

What bothers me more is the succession of core injuries Lowe has suffered over the past three years: a stress reaction and inflammation in his lower back in 2022 and 2023, an oblique strain that kept him out for six weeks at the beginning of 2024. I wouldn’t expect this kind of injury to get better as an athlete ages. But if Lowe can be on the field and productive for 400ish plate appearances a year, he’s still quite a valuable player. Especially in a world where he’s making $10.5 million or $11.5 million, and Yoán Moncada is making $5 million.

Lowe might’ve broken in during the height of the juiced ball and the elevate-and-celebrate age, but he really hit his stride as that wave was cresting in the early 2020s. Over the past three seasons, Lowe has continued to hit the ball hard and in the air, but his GB/FB numbers aren’t quite as extreme as they were five years ago.

In 2020, Lowe’s GB/FB ratio was 14th lowest out of 142 qualified hitters. In 2024, he would’ve been 32nd out of 129 if he’d had enough plate appearances to get on the leaderboard.

One thing that might’ve precipitated this change is that Lowe is seeing fewer sinkers than before. Even as sinker usage is slightly up across the league from 2020, Lowe saw just 10.0% sinkers in 2024, compared to 17.4% in 2020. Which is a drag, because he posted a .410 wOBA against sinkers in 2024, his best mark of any pitch type he faced more than 15 times. (Lowe doubled off the only knuckleball he saw in 2024, but you can’t expect him to see too many of those going forward.)

Pitchers are still throwing him stuff with arm-side action, but it’s softer now. Just 15.7% of Lowe’s diet was offspeed pitches in 2020; in 2024, that was up to 23.1%, and he hit a pitiable .189/.233/.246 against such offerings, with a whiff rate of 37.9%. Lowe still crushes fastballs generally and holds his own against breaking pitches, but there’s one other concerning development: His walk rate fell to 7.8% in 2024, after floating in the 10% to 11% range for most of his career.

Lowe’s chase numbers have crept up by about a percentage point per year every season since 2021, and in 2024 he swung at 55.2% of pitches in total, which was the highest mark of his career and would’ve been in the top 10 in baseball if he’d played enough to qualify for the rate-stat leaderboards. But Lowe is also getting pitched in the zone more, perhaps because pitchers aren’t as scared of being taken deep.

Four or five years ago, Lowe was an exceptional version of a specific kind of hitter. Since then, he’s trended toward normal, both in terms of value and style. But he’s still a first-division starter at second base, and ZiPS has him remaining so, albeit in reduced playing time, for the next three seasons.

The Rays tend not to be as ruthless about trading position players as pitchers, and given that they just committed $29 million over two years to Ha-Seong Kim, I can’t think of a reason why Lowe wouldn’t be worth $22 million over that same time period.

Of course, that also makes him valuable in the trade market. Short of a total calamity — a catastrophic injury or the absolute collapse of his hit tool — I expect Lowe to be well worth his team option for next season. Do the Rays have the horses in the middle infield to allow them to trade Lowe?

Maybe. Much of the answer to that question depends on when Kim returns from offseason shoulder surgery, and what state he’s in when he does. Especially because here are the career stats of the next four middle infielders on Tampa Bay’s depth chart in the middle infield.

Meh.

These guys could absolutely get less meh over the next six months. It wasn’t too long ago that Mead was a big-time prospect, and 2023 first-rounder Brayden Taylor might be able to overcome a lack of foot speed and stay in the middle infield. But if the Rays want to win anytime soon, the most logical way to do that is to stick Lowe in the middle of the lineup and let him do his thing.

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