{"id":677740,"date":"2026-04-17T16:15:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/677740\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T16:15:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:15:31","slug":"pirates-news-rays-manager-drops-truth-bomb-on-brandon-lowes-electric-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/677740\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates news: Rays manager drops truth bomb on Brandon Lowe’s electric start"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> will be going up against the Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a>, and they’ll see a familiar face on the other side. Brandon Lowe, who had been with the Rays<\/a> for eight seasons, is now with the Pirates, and he’s lighting it up for them to start the season.<\/p>\n

One person who isn’t startled<\/a> by his strong play so far is manager Kevin Cash.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not surprised by the start,\u201d Cash said via Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. \u201cWe saw it for (eight) years, what he\u2019s capable of doing, It\u2019ll be very good to see him. That team has played very, very well, but certainly with Brandon, he holds a pretty special place in a lot of people\u2019s minds here in this organization, helped us win a lot of ballgames.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far this season, Lowe is hitting .262 with seven homers<\/a>, 16 RBIs and a .992 OPS.<\/p>\n

It may have been a surprise how Lowe’s situation turned out during the offseason. The Rays picked up his $11.5 million option, and six\u00a0weeks later, traded him to the Pirates with outfielder Jake Mangum and reliever Mason Montgomery.<\/p>\n

The Rays already saw Lowe during. spring training, and even then, it was weird seeing him in another jersey.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn spring training it was weird, but I\u2019m happy for him and all the success he\u2019s continued to have,\u201d lefty Shane McClanahan said. \u201cI created a good friendship with him, and I\u2019m excited to see him.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Rays, Lowe was among the franchise leaders in homers, runs, extra-base hits and doubles. He also played in 745 games, which was the eighth most in franchise history.<\/p>\n

The Tampa Bay Rays will be going up against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and they’ll see a familiar face on the other side. Brandon Lowe, who had been with the Rays for eight seasons, is now with the Pirates, and he’s lighting it up for them to start the season. One person who isn’t startled by his strong play so far is manager Kevin Cash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tampa Bay Rays will be going up against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and they’ll see a familiar face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,1751,4,10,776,64,4297,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-677740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-pirates","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brandon-lowe","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-pirates","12":"tag-pittsburgh","13":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","14":"tag-pittsburghpirates","15":"tag-tampa-bay-rays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116420943759491003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}