Please do not shoot the messenger. But the same website and same metric that have deemed Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Taylor Walls to be the best defensive shortstop in the game – and possibly the best defensive player overall at any position – also show his double-play partner, regular second baseman Brandon Lowe, to be the worst at his.
Defense in baseball, as ever, is difficult to measure. But if Rays fans are to laud the use of certain statistics when they are favorable, they must be similarly accepting when they are not. And over at Fangraphs, the same Outs Above Average metric that called Walls baseball’s best at short also says that Lowe is the worst defensive second baseman among qualified players in the entire majors.
And by quite some way, too.
Lowe Has A Gap To The Field
With his -10 OAA mark, Lowe is lagging far, far behind Luis Garcia Jr of the Washington Nationals (-5) in this category among qualified players, with no one else in that group recording lower than -2. And removing the qualifier of minimum minutes played proves to be only more unfavorable – Lowe still ranks last in the majors, out of 151 players rather than 12, with only Kristian Campbell (-8) of the Boston Red Sox getting close to him.
It should be noted that due to his struggles at second, Campbell was both demoted to the minor leagues and moved to a new position. Lowe, then, stands alone at the bottom.
Another metric is somewhat more favorable – fuelled in part by the help of Walls, Lowe has turned the most double-plays of any second baseman in the majors this year. However, Fielding Bibleâs Defensive Runs Saved metric – an estimate of how many runs a fielder has saved above the expected performance of a player at their position – scores Lowe at -12, ranking at as merely the 1,303th best defensive player in the majors in 2025.
Out of 1,308.
Rays Value The Bat
Certainly, Lowe’s value comes to the Rays with his bat. An established power hitter despite not looking like one at first glance, Lowe’s career .810 OPS speaks to his consistent success at the plate, and he received his second All-Star berth this season in recognition of his strong first half. Notoriously streaky and injury-prone though he can be, Lowe is a quality Major League hitter.
Defensively, this is also an anomaly. Lowe has been far more average in the past in DRS, and has even measured out as being an above-average defensive player in the past, recording marks of +1 in 2024, -5 in 2023 and -1 in 2022. Sure-handed and making few throwing errors, Lowe has neither shone nor been a problem defensively in the past, and has also had turns at both right field and first base to add a small element of versatility, am attribute coveted by the Rays.
This year, however, Lowe’s defence has cratered. Perhaps because of the injuries, the range has gone. And yet with fellow Rays defensive struggler Yandy Diaz already having been moved to the designated hitter spot, there is no one else to put him. Taylor Walls can only cover a certain amount.
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