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:
| Thrown | Strikes | Balls | avgVelo | maxVelo | |
| 4-Seam | 7 | 6 | 1 | 94.5 | 95.6 |
| 2-Seam | 19 | 16 | 3 | 93.4 | 95.7 |
| Slider | 24 | 16 | 8 | 86.9 | 88.6 |
| Change | 5 | 3 | 2 | 87.2 | 88.3 |
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.
Coming out of the draft kept reading about how good his changeup was
Barely throws it
Barely? He threw it 19% of the time in 2024 with the Reds.
I could very easily see Lowder as a “Martinez-type”…pitching out of the pen with an occasional spot start. On another note, he looks much better since he cut his hair, possibly a reverse Samson effect.
I think he had it tied up behind him. The Delilah-effect not at work here.
Lowder is another one of those to PROTECTED players!!!!! He Crystal when he has a toenail problem. Play baseball every time it is YOUR turn!!!!!!
What is this, the 1940’s???
‘Max’ has been trolling both sites for a few weeks now.
The Reds can trade one starting pitcher for their outfield/hitter need. The Redsox may be the team willing to overpay. I would try to trade someone different than Greene, but hear the offers out. The Reds will need to sign some free agent relief pitchers. If they only have 15-20 million to spend after arbitration, then a trade is what they will need to do to improve the offense.
Lowder reminds me of Mike Leake a little.
I think he throws a little harder than Leake, but yeah, more of a control and changing speeds pitcher than a power-pitcher.
I think the good news is that the pitched a second time, and no pain from his side, etc, where he had the persistent muscle strain. He is probably laying off his 4-seam fast ball, as that takes the most exertion to throw. Gets a little stronger each time out, and hopefully does not re-injure himself.
I hope Lowder can stay healthy. He can be part of the Reds rotation for years to come. He pitched great for the Reds two years ago.
I do not see Mike Leake. I think Lowder is better than Leake when he is pitching his best.
Higher ceiling than Leake but loved Mike’s durability and consistency. Hope Lowder can stay healthy.
Good to see he’s healthy. That’s a huge step towards 2026. Lowder was fantastic down the stretch with the Reds in 2024. Hopefully he’ll be a big part of our rotation down the road and for many years. The talent is clearly there.
I think he is just working on his secondary stuff that he feels he needs work on. He has a lot of confidence in the fastball and change up. He only throws a couple of innings at a time, so he is working on the pitches he feels like he needs to fine tune.
My thoughts exactly.
There are many of the pitchers in the league that are going more than two innings. Think at this point they should be able to challenge him with more than two innings. We know they will monitor his innings closely in ’26 es[ecially if he doesn’t pitch more than 20-innings this year. If he should make big league squad it will almost resemble bullpen games.
I don’t think that’s how they’ll handle it. It’s not usually how they handle it. He will still have his innings monitored a bit, but they are very unlikely to go into 2026 with the idea that Lowder is going to be limited to like 100 innings. The typical scenario is to just build upon a previous career high, which for Lowder would be 140 innings from 2024. If teams just went by “what he threw last year” guys coming back from Tommy John surgery would take 3+ years after their surgery to return to a full work load and that’s just not what happens.