Reds pitcher Rhett Lowder makes his second Arizona Fall League start – Redleg Nation

Eight days ago, Rhett Lowder made his first start in the Arizona Fall League and looked strong in his return to the mound. He threw 23 pitches with 21 plate appearances while throwing two shutout innings. In a very unusual situation, it rained several days in the Phoenix area last week, leading to multiple postponements of games, leaving Lowder eight days between starts.

On Saturday evening, the right-hander would take the mound again and once again threw two innings as a starter. Lowder needed 32 pitches this time to get his six outs. Only 20 of those pitches were strikes in this start. He gave up one run on two hits, walked no one, struck out two and put out three on the ground.

Lowder used his slider more than any other pitch on the day, throwing fourteen. He played with his 2-seam 11 games, his 4-seam fastball four times and mixed in three changeups. The fastball control was there on the day as he threw 12 of 15 for strikes. But the secondary wasn’t as controlled: Only half of his sliders were strikes and only one of his three changeups was a strike. He had only three swings-and-misses that day and they all played on the slider. His fastball topped out at 95.3 (4-seamer) and he averaged 93.4 with the sinker and 94.4 on his 4-seamer.

Through his two starts for Peoria, he has now allowed one run on four hits in 4.0 innings pitched. Lowder didn’t walk anyone, hit a batter, and retired five of the 16 batters he faced.

Here’s a quick look at his pitch analysis in his two zeros:

So far for Lowder, it’s been more secondary stuff than fastballs. The slider was his favorite offering in both starts for the Javelinas. So far he’s been focusing a lot more on his sinker than his 4-seam. In 2024 he was mixing and matching a lot more with the Reds. His sinker, three-seam and slider were all thrown between 26 and 27% of the time, while he used his changeup 19% of the time.

That said, we’re dealing with an absolutely small sample size of pitches here and only four innings in total. The match is important – for example, you lean more on some things than on leftists than on rightists. Add that this is also a time to work on specific things, and you can get a result you might not expect to see when it comes to these types of looks.

The Arizona Fall League has live streams of most of their games. That’s possible Watch today’s match here. And to see Lowder’s first start You can view it here.