Eight days ago Rhett Lowder made his first start in the Arizona Fall League and he looked strong in his return to the mound. He threw 23 pitches with 21 strikes while throwing two shutout innings. In a very uncommon situation it absolutely poured for several days in the greater Phoenix area this past week and led to multiple game postponements, leaving Lowder at eight days between his starts.
Saturday evening the right-hander would get back on the mound and he once again pitched two innings as the starter. Lowder needed 32 pitches this time around to get his six outs. Only 20 of those pitches were strikes in this start. He gave up one run on two hits, walked no one, struck out two, and recorded three outs on the ground.
Lowder used his slider more than any other pitch on the day, throwing 14 of them. He went with his 2-seamer 11 games, his 4-seam fastball four times, and mixed in three change ups. The fastball control was there on the day as he threw 12 out of 15 of them for strikes. But the secondary stuff wasn’t quite as under control with just half of his sliders being strikes and just one of his three change ups being a strike. He only had three swings-and-misses on the day and they all game on the slider. His fastball topped out at 95.3 (4-seamer) and he averaged 93.4 with the sinker and 94.4 on his 4-seamer.
Through his two starts for Peoria he’s now allowed one run on four hits in 4.0 innings pitched. Lowder has not walked anyone, hasn’t hit a batter, and he’s struck out five of the 16 hitters that he’s faced.
Here’s a quick look at his pitch breakdown in his two outs:
ThrownStrikesBallsavgVelomaxVelo4-Seam76194.595.62-Seam1916393.495.7Slider2416886.988.6Change53287.288.3
So far it’s been more secondary stuff than fastballs for Lowder. The slider has been his go-to offering in both starts for the Javelinas. He’s focused far more on his sinker than his 4-seamer to this point. In 2024 with the Reds he was mixing and matching a lot more. His sinker, 3-seamer, and slider were all thrown between 26-27% of the time, while he used his change up 19% of the time.
With that said, we’re dealing with an absolutely small sample size of pitches here and just four innings total. The match up matters – you lean on some stuff more versus lefites than righties for example. Toss in that this is a time to work on specific things, too, and you can get an outcome that you may not expect to see when it comes to this kind of look.
The Arizona Fall League has live streams of most of their games. You can watch today’s game here. And to see Lowder’s first start you can check it out here.
