Texas Rangers: Nate Lowe not showing signs of cooling off anytime soon

When the Texas Rangers first acquired 1B Nate Lowe this past offseason, there was plenty of reason to be excited. A mid-20 year old coming off back-to-back .740+ OPS seasons, the logic that Lowe could blossom into a key building block for Texas was sound.

However (and this isn’t just exclusive to Texas), there’s a bit of a silent agreement around the MLB that trading with the Tampa Bay Rays isn’t always the best of ideas. One of the best run organizations in pro sports – if the Rays don’t want a player, they typically have a solid reason for feeling said way.

Now 28 games through the 2021 season, it’s actually starting to look like the Rays whiffed on this one, and that the Rangers are gong to end up the big winners.

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Following last night’s 8-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox – a game in which Lowe went 1-4 with two RBIs – Lowe has now extended his hitting streak to eight consecutive games. His batting average is up at .276, his OPS at .832, and he ranks second in all of baseball with 24 RBIs.

Pretty, pretty good!

Texas Rangers 1B Nate Lowe has extended his hitting streak to 8(!) straight games.

While there’s no guarantee that Lowe will finish the 2021 season with such lofty numbers, it doesn’t look like he’s planning on cooling off anytime soon. He’s raised his batting average 20 points over the past week, and he continues to display an excellent sense of poise at the plate.

In particular, his ability to use all areas of the field really stood out to me when diving into his production over the past few days:

In an era that’s obsessed with shifting and “playing players to pull”, seeing Lowe commit to spraying balls all over the outfield is a really, really good sign.

It’s still very early into Nate Lowe’s Texas Rangers career – too early to make any sort of grand conclusions regarding his future with the team – but if said early returns are signaling anything, it’s that Lowe is a player that the Rangers are going to want to keep around for the foreseeable future.

His ability to produce at the plate during the month of April has already caused heads to turn, and at just 25 years of age, there’s reason to believe that he’ll only get better as he continues to get physically stronger.

The Rangers have one final showdown with the Red Sox later this afternoon, with a four-game series against the Minnesota Twins looming up ahead. Lowe continuing to add onto his current hitting streak could easily help Texas stack up a few wins against a Twins team that’s really come out of the gate sputtering here in 2021.