Brandon Lowe heats up as Rays sweep A’s, move to 9-0

ST. PETERSBURG — It took eight games for Brandon Lowe to drive in his first runs of the season. Now, like the Rays, the second baseman is rolling.

Lowe hammered a grand slam Sunday and drove in five runs on the day as the Rays beat the A’s 11-0 and ran their winning streak to nine games in front of 11,159 fans at Tropicana Field.

The Rays are the only remaining undefeated team in Major League Baseball. The 9-0 start is the first in MLB since the 2003 Royals. They have done it definitively, too, winning each game by at least four runs. That’s a streak that hasn’t been touched since the 1939 Yankees won 10 straight games by four or more runs. The Rays have outscored their opponent 75-18.

Everything has gone the Rays’ way.

“Essentially just everything going exactly the way that we want to. It’s great when you roll out the five starters that we roll out and then turn it over to a pen that, I feel like we haven’t really used all that often,” Lowe said. “We make fun of (closer) Pete (Fairbanks) for not getting out there too often, but it’s as an offense something that we want. We don’t want our closer throwing every day.

“This is incredible baseball that we’re playing. We gotta keep it up,” Lowe said.

Drew Rasmussen played his part. He threw a nearly perfect, seven scoreless innings, retiring 21 of the 22 batters he faced. The right-hander gave up a double to Ramon Laureano in the second inning and sat the rest down. He struck out eight. He has tossed 13 scoreless innings over his first two starts of the year, giving up three hits and has not walked a batter.

With homers by Lowe, Harold Ramirez and Wander Franco on Sunday, the Rays have 24 through nine games, leading the majors.

And the Brandon Lowe that the Rays’ front office banked on being healthy and able to be the left-handed power hitter they needed, even after an injury-shortened 2022 season, is showing up.

“I mean, the pull-side power he has, he’s really got to be connected and staying on the ball to hit the ball like he did today to leftfield,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “So I would just say (he’s) timed up and staying connected with his swing. I know that in batting practice, even in spring training, we saw more balls that he was really driving the other way. So that was a good sign.”

Lowe snapped his RBI drought on Saturday with a three-run homer and now has eight RBIs in the last two games.

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Sunday, Lowe crushed his third career grand slam 383 feet to leftfield. It was the second grand slam the Rays hit in the three-game series with the A’s. Lowe also singled in Christian Bethancourt from second base in the seventh inning Sunday.

“I mean, it’s just a byproduct of being healthy,” said Lowe. “I feel good and nothing hurts so good things happen.”

The 28-year old Lowe is one of the left-handed bats the Rays were counting on having a bounce-back instead of signing a free agent this winter. Lowe hit just eight home runs and played in just 65 games last season because of a stress reaction in his back.

Lowe credited Ramirez for grinding it out and sprinting to second on a groundball to shortstop the play before his grand slam. That heads-up base running extended the fourth inning for Lowe.

“Every thanks has to go to Harold there for really busting down a line on something that he really could have just dogged to second to save his body,” Lowe said. “I don’t get that at-bat without Harold and I gotta thank him. I think I owe him a steak later on this year.”

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