DENVER — Nathaniel Lowe is a man of few words. But you know what they say: Speak softly and carry a big stick.
Lowe certainly did that in Wednesday afternoon’s 16-4 victory over the Rockies to conclude a brief two-game series at Coors Field, driving in a career-high five runs while finishing a double shy of the cycle.
“Sorry,” Lowe said at the conclusion of his postgame media interview, apologizing for what he felt was a lack of depth to what he had to say about not only his 3-for-6 afternoon, but also a month in which he’s hitting .378 with five homers. The homers already equal his total from July, and Wednesday’s shot — a Statcast-projected 443-foot blast into the second deck in right field — was his 20th of the season.
But there was nothing for Lowe to apologize for. Not the way he has been hitting in August.
“He’s been pretty consistent all year, but as of late, he’s really got it going,” interim manager Tony Beasley said. “He made an adjustment against right-handed pitchers because he was hitting lefties better; he was kind of a reverse-split guy. … I think that’s the thing that’s really allowed him to take off. What he was doing against lefties, now he’s doing against lefties and righties.”
Entering August, Lowe was hitting .270/.319/.422 against right-handers and .287/.327/.535 against southpaws. But in 73 plate appearances against righties this month, he’s hitting .318/.384/.545.
Wednesday’s homer was Lowe’s third of the month against righties, coming off Rockies reliever Robert Stephenson in the eighth. And Lowe has continued to crush lefties, to the tune of a .542/.577/.792 slash line in 25 plate appearances this month.
The home run was one of two balls that left the ballpark for Texas on a day when it scored its most runs in a regular-season game since May 16, 2019, when the Rangers scored 16 against the Royals in Kansas City. The other was a pinch-hit two-run shot by Charlie Culberson in the ninth, his first of the year.
The game was blown open early, with the Rangers scoring seven times in the second inning to give starter Martín Pérez — who tossed six scoreless innings while allowing four hits, walking one and striking out seven — more than enough support. Texas opened the second with six straight hits, the first time that had happened for the Rangers since Aug. 27, 2015. In all, the first seven Rangers to bat in the second reached base and scored. The last time the Rangers had done that was Aug. 8, 2015.
But in a sense, the homer was the biggest hit of the 18 Texas recorded in the rout. That’s because the Rockies scored four runs in the seventh to cut the deficit to five — not an insurmountable climb at Coors Field. In the series opener on Tuesday, the Rangers jumped out to a 3-0 lead, only to lose, 7-6.
“It was big,” Beasley said. “Because the game’s kind of in the balance still. The three-run homer kind of just, boom — gave us an added cushion that we needed. Obviously, things can happen quick here, as I saw in the seventh.”
“Boom” is a good way to describe Lowe’s homer. He joined Corey Seager (26 homers), Marcus Semien (20) and Adolis Garcia (20) to make Texas the only club in the Majors with four 20-homer players.
While he didn’t have much to say about the homer itself, Lowe did acknowledge that he has been improving with his approach at the plate. There’s still more work to do, as evidenced by his final at-bat of the day in the ninth — with a cycle within reach, he got a little overzealous and struck out.
“I think I’ve done a better job of just trying to do what I can do with a good pitch to hit,” Lowe said. “ … The last at-bat, you saw where I chased because I tried to do too much. … I had a good chance for [a cycle], but some pretty bad aim there [with the strikeout]. But we’ll take a ‘W.’”
The Rangers have gotten more of those lately, too. With Wednesday’s win, they finished their road trip 4-2, and they’ve won eight of their last 12 games overall.