Cincinnati Reds pitcher Rhett Lowder looks great in the AFL debut

Photo: Redleg Nation Staff

Rhett Lowder has had a 2025 season that he would like to put behind him. An elbow injury in the offseason kept him back from playing in spring training. Once he was ready to start a rehab assignment he injured his oblique and missed nearly four months. Then while on a rehab outing for that injury he had a start scratched when his shoulder didn’t quite recover the way he would have expected from his previous start and that ended his regular season. He never pitched in a non-rehab game throughout the year. The Cincinnati Reds sent him to the Arizona Fall League this year to get him some innings and hopefully end 2025 on a good note.

Friday afternoon saw Lowder take the mound for the first time in the league, starting Peoria’s 4th game of the year. The 1st inning almost couldn’t have gone better. Lowder threw 10 pitches, all were strikes, and he struck out two of the three hitters that he faced while getting four swings-and-misses.

Things didn’t quite go as well in his 2nd inning as he would give up two hits, but he got out of the inning on what turned into a called strike three when his catcher and Reds organization mate Alfredo Duno challenged the call when the umpire signaled ball. Duno got the call right and Hawkeye confirmed it as a strike to give Lowder his third strikeout of the game. He threw 13 pitches in that frame and 11 of those were strikes.

That would be the final inning for Rhett Lowder. He finished the day with two shutout innings and allowed two hits, walked no one, allowed no runs, and he struck out three batters. Lowder threw 23 pitches with 21 strikes and had two groundouts.

During the outing Lowder threw 10 sliders with nine of them being strikes and five of them generating swings and misses. He mixed in seven sinkers and all of them were strikes. He threw three 4-seam fastballs and all of those were strikes. Lowder also threw three change ups and two of those went down as strikes, with one of them getting a swing and a miss. His fastball topped out at 95.7 MPH on the day.

Rhett Lowder