Rays, Brandon Lowe agree to extension

The Rays have agreed to a six-year, $24M contract extension with infielder/outfielder Brandon Lowe, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). The contract contains a pair of club options that would buy out a pair of would-be free-agent seasons as well.

Lowe has just 43 games of Major League experience under his belt, but is widely regarded as one of the Rays’ most promising prospects. Baseball America rated him as the game’s No. 93 prospect this offseason, while Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel of Fangraphs ranked him 46th overall.

It’s unusual but not unheard of for teams to lock up players with such minimal MLB experience, and the Rays in particular have done so in past years with both Evan Longoria and Matt Moore. Lowe’s deal will line up identically to the Phillies’ six-year, $24M deal with Scott Kingery — a contract signed before Kingery even played an MLB game.

The early returns on Lowe in the Major Leagues were relatively promising. The 2015 third-round pick reached the Major Leagues for the first time at the age of 23 and hit .233/.324/.450 with six home runs, six doubles and a pair of triples. Context-neutral metrics like OPS+ (112) and wRC+ (113) felt his bat was 12-13% better than that of a league-average hitter. Lowe’s 25.6% strikeout rate was likely a bit higher than the Rays would prefer, but he showed power and drew walks at a 10.8% clip in his first crack at MLB opposition. That production came on the heels of a sensational .297/.391/.558 slash between Double-A and Triple-A, creating further optimism that Lowe can be an integral part of the Rays moving forward.