BRADENTON, Fla. -- Sitting down with Pirates manager Don Kelly at the beginning of his first Spring Training with his new team, Brandon Lowe made just one scheduling request.
When the Pirates visit the Rays at Charlotte Sports Park on March 15, Lowe wants to be in Pittsburgh’s lineup. More importantly, he wants to say goodbye to the only organization he knew for the first 11 years of his career.
Lowe’s farewell to Tampa Bay began in December, when the Rays traded him to the Pirates as part of a three-team deal, and it continued Sunday at LECOM Park. Coincidentally, the Rays were in town to face the Pirates when Lowe made his Spring Training debut for Pittsburgh, batting second and playing second base.
“The goodbye tour has started, essentially,” Lowe said before the game, smiling. “I’m looking forward to seeing everybody else when we do get down there.”
The Rays’ lineup and pitching staff that made the trip north Sunday was largely unfamiliar to Lowe, especially after shortstop Taylor Walls was scratched due to left oblique tightness. But Lowe caught up with Walls and several coaches before the game, including bench coach Rodney Linares, hitting coach Chad Mottola and assistant hitting coach Ozzie Timmons.
Standing in front of his locker in the corner of the Pirates’ clubhouse, Lowe reflected on his time with the Rays, the trade and the transition from his familiar surroundings to a new environment.
“I've talked about it for years, being on the other side of things. There's certain parts of this business that really stink, and this is one of them when they kind of rip you away from a home,” Lowe said. “But you go into a new place, and the guys here have been nothing but great.”
Still, Lowe acknowledged, there was some “weirdness” when he got off Interstate 75 in Bradenton rather than driving farther south to Port Charlotte. Not seeing him in the Rays’ clubhouse has been similarly strange.
In eight Major League seasons with the Rays, Lowe hit the third-most home runs (157) in franchise history, emerged as a staple of their lineup and became a key leader in their clubhouse.
“Miss him. Good dude. Great player, and he's a good friend. We're all wishing him the best of luck and the most success possible,” starter Shane McClanahan said. “Me and Yandy [Díaz] were actually talking about it the other day. We were like, ‘It's kind of weird not having the little guy around.’”
It has been a significant transition, considering Lowe had been with the Rays since he was selected out of Maryland in the third round of the 2015 Draft. As manager Kevin Cash noted, the Rays saw him “evolve as a player, as a person, as a teammate, as a dad, as a husband” during that time.
The most challenging part of the trade, Lowe said, was when he and his wife, Madison, had to tell their 3-year-old son, Emmett. Especially after they saw a video posted by Stevie Rasmussen of her and Drew’s son, Rhett, growing up alongside Emmett.
“I mean, from the times they were just little potatoes in our arms to last year, they're sprinting around the history museum in D.C.,” Lowe said. “The hardest thing was telling him, 'Hey man, daddy plays for a new team now. Instead of there being Rhett, you're going to make new friends.'
“Thankfully, Emmett is the way that he is. I feel like he could make friends with a brick wall if he wanted to.”
Lowe said he wasn’t surprised by the trade itself. He is entering the final club option year of the extension he signed with the Rays in March 2019, with free agency only months away. Seeing so many teammates get traded during his time with Tampa Bay prepared him for the possibility.
“Being with the Rays, you kind of start to become a little mini-GM, essentially. You start looking at whose contracts are what and how much time they have left,” Lowe said. “The offseason came, and I was like, ‘My value is going nowhere but down.’”
Then, in early December, Lowe got a call from Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander saying there was “a little bit of traction happening.” Lowe correctly assumed that meant something was imminent, and he started looking into the teams he’d heard were involved. A few days later, the deal was done, and Lowe was packing his well-worn Rays gear into boxes.
With time, Lowe has come to appreciate the reason why it felt like such a big change. Not everyone gets to spend so much time in one place, making so many fond memories along the way.
“We were blessed to be in a situation where we didn't know any different. That's not the case for a lot of guys in baseball,” Lowe said. “I was extremely thankful to have an opportunity to spend 10 years in the organization.”