Rangers IF Nathaniel Lowe Claims AL Player of Week
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Texas first baseman Nathaniel Lowe was named the American League Player of the Week for his work last week for the Rangers.
The American League made the announcement on Monday.
Lowe pushed his season batting average to .300 last week. The Rangers haven't anyone hit .300 for a season since since Elvis Andrus and Adrián Beltré in 2016.
This is the first time Lowe has won a weekly award, and he joins Corey Seager (July 4-10) as the second Ranger to win the weekly player award this season.
The last time the Rangers had multiple players win a weekly award in the same season was in 2017, when Nomar Mazara and Beltré were honored.
Lowe was the Rangers April Player of Month after hitting .313 with one home run and nine RBI. In May he went the opposite direction, hitting just .205 with two home runs and 7 RBI.
But his hitting has been on an upward trend ever since.
Lowe batted .385/.407/.923/1.331 (10-for-26) with four home runs and 11 RBI in six games last week, leading all MLB players in RBI, home runs (tied), and total bases (tied-24). He posted a career-high five RBI on Wednesday at Colorado and homered in three consecutive games from Tuesday-Friday for the longest such streak of his career.
Lowe also homered in Sunday’s 9-8 loss to Detroit.
Lowe owns a .392/.446/.657/1.103 (40-for-102) slash line with seven home runs and 20 RBI in August, ranking among AL leaders this month in hits (first), total bases (first, 67), batting average (second), slugging percentage (second), home runs (tied for second), on-base plus slugging (third), on-base percentage (fourth) and RBI (tied for fourth).
He is the only Ranger to have at least seven home runs and at least 20 RBI in a single month this season.
For the season, Lowe is batting .300/.349/.349/.847 with a career-high 22 home runs and 65 RBI. He currently ranks among AL leaders in multi-hit games (second, 42), hits (tied for second), total bases (sixth, 232), batting average (sixth), slugging percentage (seventh), and OPS (ninth).
Since the All-Star break, the only AL player with more home runs than Lowe (10) is the Yankees' Aaron Judge (16) and the only players with a higher OPS than Lowe (1.054) are Judge (1.221) and Houston's Alex Bregman (1.062).
The Rangers open up a two-game series at home against Houston on Tuesday.
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