Lowrie is now apart of the offensive problem after most of us felt he would be a boost offensively. He really doesn't have a track record of being anything special but he has been flat out bad recently.
A lot of us tried to warn people that their expectations were too high for him. Coming into this year he had a career .741 OPS. Given that his OPS pre injury was up around 1.000, some regression was likely. He isn't a great hitter, never has been, he's just a solid guy. His OPS now is .728. He's in a huge slump, but like most of the team he has a track record of solid results, he will snap out of this. He's still our best OBP guy after Correa, Springer and Altuve.
I have hope he won't suck this bad for too much longer, it just hurts that he is struggling without two of our best offensive players not being in the lineup in Correa and Springer. Not expecting Lowrie to carry the team in their absence but Lowrie's been so bad it's almost time to sit him for a while and press the reset button. Help is on the way soon so I'm encouraged.
The problem is, maybe he is struggling because the thumb is not 100 percent? If thats the case, then once Springer is up, then Valbuena should become our regular 3b as he is doing much better than him lately, plus is better defensively.
This is a possibility especially with him re-injuring the thumb. He may just need to sit for a while if he is not healed enough. Similar to Qualls playing injured earlier in the year hurting the team.
