Jed Lowrie, all things considered, had a successful Major League Baseball career. It just maybe didn’t out the way most expected or, in the case of Red Sox fans, hoped.
Lowrie retired from baseball Thursday, telling the San Francisco Chronicle he was hanging up his cleats after 14 big league seasons.
Generally speaking, it was a very nice career for Lowrie, spent mostly with the Oakland Athletics where he became an All-Star. His best season was that 2018 campaign when he played in 157 games, hitting .267 with 23 home runs and 99 RBIs for the A’s.
Red Sox fans, however, are likely to remember Lowrie for what could have been. Boston used a sandwich pick on Lowrie in 2005, taking him out of Stanford with the 45th pick. He was the subject of trade rumors at various points in his minor league development, most notably regarding Boston’s talks with the Minnesota Twins regarding ace pitcher Johan Santana.
Those talks never came to fruition, though, and Lowrie made his big league debut with the Sox in April of 2008. He never played a full season with Boston, only showing brief flashes of the skill and baseball IQ that made him a high pick. His best performance was an abbreviated 2010 campaign when he hit .287 with nine home runs and 24 RBIs in just 55 games, a .907 OPS that would have been by far the best of his career.
His best moment came in 2008 when his walk-off RBI single clinched the American League Division Series for the Sox.
The Red Sox ultimately traded Lowrie to Houston in 2011 as part of the trade that brought Mark Melancon to Boston.
