'Fortunate to have him': B. Lowe reverses Rays' fortunes with clutch blast

ST. LOUIS -- If you’re somehow stumped when people say a player is carrying his team, check out what Brandon Lowe is doing for the Rays of late.

With Tampa Bay stuck in a clutch-hitting drought, Lowe has virtually been its only source of sustenance for days, if not weeks. He punctuated his two-week-long tear with a late home run that allowed the Rays to record a sweep-averting 6-4 win at Busch Stadium vs. the Cardinals Thursday night.

When Lowe came to the plate with a runner at first base in the top of the seventh inning, he and his teammates had managed just two hits in 29 at-bats with runners in scoring position to that point in the series. It’s no wonder they lost the first two games, which both featured early scoring followed by inning after inning of nothingness.

Nobody was in scoring position when Lowe came up Thursday, but the way he’s swinging these days, he’s in scoring position when he gets in the batter’s box. He hit a high fly ball toward center field that just eluded a leaping attempt by Cardinals center fielder Victor Scott II at the wall to help the Rays escape this rare trip to Busch Stadium with their playoff hopes intact.

Because Scott rolled around on the warning track for several seconds, nobody on the Rays could tell whether he had caught it or whether it had cleared the fence. Needless to say, all eyes, including those of the umpires who had to make the call, were on him.

“Every single part of me just went straight to the worst, so I thought he caught it,” Lowe said. “He wasn’t doing anything, the umpires were telling me, ‘Look at a different guy,’ so I was a little all over the place, but I was pretty happy once I saw the right umpire. I wasn’t going to stop running until I knew.”

In his past 12 games, Lowe is batting .383 with seven doubles, three home runs, four walks and 13 RBIs. He isn’t having the kind of season he did in 2021, when he mashed 39 home runs and finished top 10 in American League MVP voting, but if he had enough at-bats to qualify (an oblique strain cost him time), his .875 OPS would rank 17th in MLB.

Speculation had even arisen around the Trade Deadline that the Rays might part with Lowe to accumulate more prospects for the future. The Rays have a $10.5 million option with a $1 million buyout on Lowe’s services for next season. It seems pretty obvious they’ll pick that one up barring some unexpected development between now and the end of the season.

“I didn’t talk about him getting traded,” Rays manager Kevin Cash clarified. “We’re fortunate to have him. He’s been on a tremendous roll. He’s a professional, big-time big league hitter when he gets his timing and consistency. We’re seeing a guy that’s been healthy now for a little while, and the timing’s there with the power and the bat-to-ball [ability].”

Thanks to Lowe, the Rays remain at least loiterers in the American League playoff picture. After a .500 (3-3) road trip to Houston and St. Louis, they are five games out of the final spot in the Wild Card race.

Lowe’s blast and another tack-on run the Rays added in the ninth ensured they could celebrate a couple of successful homecoming stories afterward. Dylan Carlson got Tampa Bay’s offense going with a two-run, two-out single in the first inning to burn his former team, which had given up on its former top prospect and starting outfielder. The Rays acquired Carlson for reliever Shawn Armstrong on July 30, ahead of the Trade Deadline.

And Pete Fairbanks got to make his first appearance as a professional in his hometown of St. Louis. He had twice pitched at Busch Stadium, once for his Webster Groves high school team and once against Illinois when he was pitching for University of Missouri. But this time he got to pick up his 22nd save with about 25 family members, friends and a couple of ex-college teammates making noise behind the Rays’ dugout.

“I had to give myself my good breath to kind of get re-centered and then try to attack the strike zone -- treat it like it’s any other place even though I’ve spent more hours probably at this place than at any place but the Trop,” Fairbanks said.

The Rays will find out more about the injury that caused Josh Lowe to leave the game after he fouled a first-inning pitch off his right knee. X-rays taken at the stadium were negative, but Lowe said it was still plenty sore more than an hour after he had left the game. Cash said the team will decide whether to put him on the injured list when it gets to Tropicana Field before Friday’s game vs. the Orioles.

One side story created by Lowe’s departure was the showdown it created with former Mizzou Tigers. Kyle Gibson, who was drafted by the Twins in the first round in 2009, got the better of the Rays’ Kameron Misner, who was drafted in the first round by the Marlins in ‘19. The University of Missouri campus where they both played is about a 90-minute drive from Busch Stadium.