Lowe was quietly effective, underappreciated, and is now gone
With the 2024 regular season over, it is time for us to go back and take a look at the players who appeared for the Texas Rangers this season.
Today, we look at first baseman Nathaniel Lowe.
Nathaniel Lowe is the type of player that successful teams need. No, he’s not a star, and while we’d like to have stars at every position, that isn’t a realistic expectation. Nathaniel Lowe hasn’t made an All Star team, isn’t likely to ever be in the MVP race, and despite picking up both a Silver Slugger Award and a Gold Glove during his four years in Texas, he’s not the type of player who is going to rack up a bunch of hardware.
But teams need good and useful players who aren’t making a ton of money to round out their lineups, and that describes 2024 Nathaniel Lowe — and really, the Nathaniel Lowe that the Texas Rangers have had the past four years — to a tee. Lowe has been a solid if unspectacular first baseman who made league minimum his first two seasons and a combined $11.55 million in his two arbitration-eligible seasons with Texas.
The 2024 season was your typical Nathaniel Lowe season, with the exception of him starting the season on the injured list and missing the first 21 games of the season. Once he was healthy, though, he played in 140 of the team’s remaining 141 games, which is what we’ve come to expect from Lowe, who played 161 games in 2023 and 157 games in 2021 and 2022.
Lowe had a .361 OBP in 2024, right in line with the .360, .358 and .357 OBPs he put up the previous three seasons. He hit .265, which is below his .302 in his big offensive year of 2022 but right there with the .264 average he had in 2021 and the .262 average he had in 2023. His .401 slugging percentage was a shade below his .415 and .414 slugging in 2021 and 2023, respectively, but due to offense being down leaguewide, his 121 wRC+ was actually better than the 114 and 117 he put up in 2021 and 2023.
Along the “consistency” lines, Lowe struck out 22.1% of the time in 2024, compared to 22.8% in each of the two previous years. His walk rate of 12.6% is right there with his 12.5% walk rate in 2021 and 12.8% walk rate in 2023. He had 16 home runs in 2024 — well short of the 27 he had in 2022, but in line with the 17 homers he registered in 2023 and the 18 homers he had in 2021. Not surprisingly, his 2.7 bWAR and 2.8 fWAR are each 0.1 higher than his respective bWAR and fWAR in 2023, and right in line with what he did in 2021 and 2022.
All this leads one to wonder why it is that Nathaniel Lowe became such a whipping boy, such a target of derision, for so many Rangers fans. Why it is that, seemingly from the time the Rangers acquired him, so many have wanted him replaced.
It starts with the the original trade for Lowe, I think. Coming off an awful 2020 season, with the team committing to a full on rebuild, the Rangers traded three prospects — Heriberto Hernandez, Osleivis Basabe, and Alexander Ovalles — to the Rays for Lowe, Jake Guenther, and a player to be named later who ended up being Carl Chester.
The move was widely panned. Hernandez, Basabe and Ovalles didn’t play in the minors in 2020 due to the pandemic, but had each put up quality numbers in the Arizona Complex League in 2019. Hernandez, in particular, became a favorite in some quarters, as a catcher who drew walks and could hit for power. Basabe was an athletic infielder with encouraging baseball skills. Ovalles looked like maybe he could hit. A rebuilding team, one would think, would want to be acquiring players like that, rather than sending them away.
And not just sending them away — sending them to the Tampa Bay Rays, in exchange for a first baseman they had decided wasn’t good enough to start for them. Trading with the Rays is bad enough — those sorts of deals always seem to work out better for Tampa than the other team — but trading for a questionable major league first baseman when you are starting your rebuild, and giving up prospects you should be hoarding to do that? That’s the sort of things that get the knives out.
It didn’t help that, come spring training, Lowe got off to an awful start, was ripped for being passive at the plate, with fans and some media members suggesting that, given he had options remaining, he should be sent to AAA to start the season, with Ronald Guzman — who many felt hadn’t gotten a fair shake in the first place — at first to start the season. Lowe explained that he always was very patient at the plate early in spring training, that it was how he prepared, but it provided for a storyline about the Rangers’ latest misguided move being an immediate failure.
Lowe, of course, wasn’t optioned, and started the season at first base. Guzman, who was out of options, started the year on the bench, with the Rangers giving him some work in the outfield to try to improve his versatility. Lowe was the newcomer, and not a good defender at first base, while Guzman was considered to be very good defensively there, leading to questions about why Guzman had to be the one to work in the outfield, rather than Lowe. The complaints reached a crescendo when Guzman, making his first start in the at field, stepped awkwardly on the turf in Tampa in early April of 2021 and tore his ACL, ending his season.
Lowe quietly had a decent year, but underwhelmed defensively and didn’t hit for much power. In addition, as 2021 went on, and the Rangers floundered towards a 100 loss season, the spotlight started shining on Lowe and his struggles against fastballs. At the same time, Nick Solak — acquired from the Rays for Pete Fairbanks in 2019 — wasn’t hitting at all. The narrative became that the Rays snookered the Rangers, foisting upon them in a pair of deals a poor defensive second baseman who couldn’t hit breaking pitches and a poor defensive first baseman who couldn’t hit fastballs.
In 2022, he improved significantly offensively, walking less but hitting for more power. The team disappointing once again, however, and Lowe’s glovework — which was subpar — became a key talking point. Lowe won the Silver Slugger Award for first base, but there still seemed to be a general lack of satisfaction with him — he was perceived by many to be the bad defensive first baseman who couldn’t hit fastballs.
Then 2023, and the World Series title. Lowe worked on his defense, winning a Gold Glove to go with his shiny new ring. He had a solid offensive season. One would think he had earned redemption. There were maybe some rumblings about his awful September and underwhelming playoff performance, complaining about how he couldn’t hit fastballs (despite being above average against fastballs in 2023, per Statcast), but winning should cure everything, right?
Except it didn’t. Lowe struggled in the first half of the season offensively once he returned from the injured list. The team didn’t perform to expectations, with the offense in particular disappointing, and Lowe became a particular focus of angst. At the All Star Break, Lowe was slashing just .262/.348/.373, with just 6 home runs in 75 games, and he became one of the prime recipients of the blame for the Rangers’ bats falling short. Lowe had a particularly bad August, putting up a 598 OPS during a time when the team pretty much fell out of contention, and the consensus among fans and media seemed to be that Lowe was a problem, that he had to go.
Lowe rebounded with a very good September, slashing .310/.414/.517 with 5 homers, though by that point the Rangers were out of the race and folks weren’t paying that much attention. He had another two and a half win season under his belt, another solid if unspectacular slash line, but the defending World Series champions finished under .500 in 2024, the offense failed, and Lowe was one of the scapegoats.
In retrospect, you can see why Lowe was such a target. He was acquired in an unpopular trade. He’s a first baseman who doesn’t hit as many homers as folks think a first baseman should hit. He got a reputation early on for being a bad defender who couldn’t hit fastballs, and even though his glovework and his performance against fastballs improved (to the point he was the best hitter for the Rangers against fastballs in 2024), when a ball would be hit down the first base line for a double, or when he would swing and miss at a fastball up the zone, it was easy to shake your head and say, see, same old Nate Lowe. People would compare him, often unfavorably, with Mitch Moreland, even though Lowe was better for the Rangers than Moreland ever was.
Lowe always seemed to me like someone the Rangers would look to move a year or two before he hit free agency, when he was getting more expensive and when you would think the team would have viable internal options available. The Rangers did move him, of course, though they are replacing him with an external option that is a downgrade at the position (though also cheaper). And they didn’t non-tender him, as many seemed to expect, but instead tendered him and ended up trading him for Robert Garcia, an interesting lefty reliever with five years of team control remaining and a 2.38 FIP in 59 innings in 2024.
The Rangers, and Rangers fans, should feel good about Nathaniel Lowe’s time with the Rangers. They made what turned out to be a very solid deal to get him, they got four productive and relatively cheap seasons out of him, won a ring with him at first base, and have now parted ways with him in a transaction that got them someone they believe can contribute in the team’s bullpen the next few years.
We should appreciate Nathaniel Lowe.
Previously: