On Monday evening, we will officially find out which free agents received qualifying offers. It’s very likely that Brandon Lowe will be on that relatively short list of names.
It’s also likely that the 32-year-old second baseman will decline that one-year, $23.15M offer in pursuit of a multi-year deal.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship between Lowe and Pittsburgh is finished.
If anything, it’s practically an annual tradition at this point that multiple players will decline a qualifying offer before ultimately re-signing with the same team.
Kyle Schwarber, Michael King and Zac Gallen all fit the bill this past winter. Same goes for Pete Alonso, Teoscar Hernández and Sean Manaea the previous offseason. There were two such players (Aaron Nola and Cody Bellinger) during the 2023-24 offseason, three (Aaron Judge, Brandon Nimmo and Anthony Rizzo) in 2022-23 and three more (Raisel Iglesias, Chris Taylor and Justin Verlander) in 2021-22.
So why not Lowe, who was Pittsburgh’s MVP with 35 home runs and 96 RBI in 2026?
If the Pirates let him get away, second base becomes a major problem for them. (Or third base, if they move Nick Gonzales from the hot corner back to his previous home.) Either way, as the roster presently stands, they’d be forced to play one of Jared Triolo, Jacob Gonzalez, Nick Yorke or Tyler Callihan on a daily basis, and they had a collective OPS of around .610 this past season.
Help should eventually be coming in the form of Murf Gray. The third baseman had 32 home runs and a .969 OPS in 126 games played in the minors in 2026, but he might still be a year away.
In the meantime, bringing back Lowe on a short-term deal would be fantastic for a team that is in “win now” mode for the first time in a decade.