Rumors: Texas Rangers Showing Interest in Mets’ Jed Lowrie

While the Winter Meetings start to wind down, the Texas Rangers are reportedly showing interest in the New York Mets utility-man, Jed Lowrie.

Anthony Rendon as far as we know is still top priority for the Texas Rangers this offseason but it seems they are looking at other infielders in the meantime. Andy Martino of the SNY Network reported via Twitter that the Rangers, along with AL West foe Oakland, are in contact with the Mets regarding utility man Jed Lowrie.

We don’t know if this is independent of any pursuit of Anthony Rendon or if Texas is possibly looking at Lowrie as an alternative. Lowrie played just nine games for the Mets last season after signing a two-year, $20 million contract with them last winter. Lowrie had a pair of injuries that knocked him out for the majority of 2019 preventing him from building on an All-Star campaign in 2018 with the Athletics.

A true utility player, Lowrie has a career .261 average in his 12 year career. He’s bounced around with stints in Boston, Houston, Oakland and most recently New York. His best year was the 2018 All-Star run in his age-34 season where he hit .267 with an .801 OPS and 5.0 fWAR. That 157 game breakout followed up a successful 2017 season with Oakland where he played in 153 games hitting .277 with an .808 OPS and 3.6 fWAR.

Defensively Lowrie has the ability to play all throughout the infield although he has spent most of his time recently at second base where he was the A’s starter in 2017 and 2018. As nice as it is to have a player of Lowrie’s caliber ready to fill in whenever needed, Texas has a couple of utility players already on their roster in the forms of Danny Santana and Isiah Kiner-Falefa. That makes this a bit of a curious interest considering Lowrie is really a full season removed from consistent play, owed $10 million and is heading into his age-36 season.

If the Rangers did go after Lowrie, it could signal possibly the club moving on from either Santana or Kiner-Falefa this offseason although that feels unlikely. Kiner-Falefa had a down year in 2019 but a lot of that can likely be chalked up to him trying to become a big league catcher on the fly which was more or less a failed experiment. Santana on the other hand was one of the Rangers best players in 2019 and with two more years of team control, should be a player Texas is trying to build around. As of now, this seems more like a quick check-in than anything we should follow closely.