Lowe goes deep twice to end drought in emphatic fashion

SEATTLE -- As the ball flew off his bat, bound for the first row of seats in right-center field, Brandon Lowe took a long look before breaking into a slow trot around the bases at T-Mobile Park. Lowe said it didn’t feel like he’d been on a home run drought, but by his usual standard, he had waited a long time for that feeling.

He didn’t have to wait nearly as long for the next one.

Lowe snapped the longest homerless streak of his career with a fourth-inning solo shot off Seattle lefty Marco Gonzales then went deep against Gonzales again his next time up, and his seventh career multi-homer game was just the start of a big offensive night for Tampa Bay. Wander Franco recorded three hits and Manuel Margot slugged his first grand slam as the Rays cruised to an 8-2 romp over the Mariners on Saturday night, their sixth straight win and their 13th in their last 17 games.

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“That was really encouraging. Good for Brandon,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “I know he likes hitting home runs. We like it when he hits home runs.”

With the Rays up by a run after three innings, Lowe stepped to the plate to lead off the fourth. At that point, the second baseman had gone 19 games, 79 plate appearances and 69 at-bats since his last home run on April 14. Before he felt like he had time to settle into the batter’s box, Lowe took a sinker from Gonzales for strike one. Then he connected on the next pitch, a changeup near the top of the zone, and watched it fly.

The ball soared toward the outfield wall at 109.8 mph, according to Statcast, and landed a projected 400 feet away. Whether he’d thought about it or not, his homerless skid was officially in the rear-view mirror.

“It didn't feel like a home run drought or anything like that,” said Lowe, who now leads the Rays with five homers on the year. “It's not like I hadn't been hitting the ball hard. It just hadn't been in the air.”

Cash noted Tuesday that Lowe was “getting close” to one of his patented hot streaks at the plate. His contact rate improved. He took his walks. Even when he missed, he barely missed. Above all, Cash knows Lowe’s track record.

“Just felt like, more importantly than anything, he's really good. He's not going to go south much longer,” Cash said. “He's proven that he's a really good hitter.”

Behind the scenes, Lowe said, he’d been putting in “a lot of work in the cage,” including “a few angry swings.” Lowe said he wrote down a few ideas and cues in an electronic notebook he keeps in his locker, though he declined to reveal the specific changes he made.

Clearly, though, they’re working. He showed as much Saturday in back-to-back plate appearances, ending the longest homerless streak of his career and what turned out to be the shortest possible drought.

“There were some mental adjustments, physical adjustments. It's hard to just place one little thing. Hitting is very difficult,” Lowe said. “You don't get to just write one thing and be like, 'OK, this is a fix-all kind of moment.’”

Lowe came to the plate again in the sixth and unloaded on a high, first-pitch sinker and smashed it a projected 407 feet out to right-center at 106.8 mph. That continued an interesting trend for Lowe, as he’s gone deep in consecutive plate appearances during each of his last six multi-homer games. If nothing else, it goes to show: When Lowe is locked in, he gets as hot as anybody in baseball.

“Baseball is kind of that way where, one week, it feels like you're going to hit six homers, and then you go a couple of weeks without hitting a homer,” he said. “Baseball's a weird game that way.”

But nobody on Tampa Bay’s roster is hotter than Margot at the moment. After coming through with clutch late-inning hits two of the last three days, he stepped to the plate in the eighth with the bases loaded, nobody out and former Ray Diego Castillo on the mound. Margot swung on Castillo’s first pitch and drove it out to left-center, expanding the Rays’ lead to seven runs with the club’s first slam of the season.

“He's just seeing everything really, really well,” Cash said of Margot, who’s batting .313 with an .825 OPS on the year -- and .440 with a 1.302 OPS in seven games this month. “He was ready for that pitch.”

Rays starter Drew Rasmussen didn’t let his teammates’ big night at the plate go to waste, striking out five in a five-inning homecoming with 42 local family members and friends huddled together in a suite down the right-field line at the ballpark the Washington native still calls Safeco Field.

“It's awesome,” Rasmussen said. “We don't get the opportunity to come back here and play all too often throughout the year, so to have everyone in attendance and the ability to play well in front of them is truly a blessing.”