A New Timeline in the Injury Recovery of Tampa Bay Rays' Brandon Lowe

Brandon Lowe of the Tampa Bay Rays has been sidelined with a back injury but has taken a nice step in his recovery and looks to be on track for a July return.

The Tampa Bay Rays are the best team in baseball entering play on Tuesday.

As they get ready to take on the upstart Baltimore Orioles, the Rays are a league-best 51-24.

The Rays have done all of this despite a myriad of injuries including missing Tyler Glasnow, Pete Fairbanks, Jeffrey Springs, Drew Rasmussen and Brandon Lowe for a large chunks of the season at various times.

At least on the latter, the Rays got good news on Tuesday.

The following update comes from the Rotowire fantasy baseball portal:

Lowe (back) played catch at Tropicana Field pregame Tuesday, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports.

ANALYSIS
Lowe wound up being shut down for a little less than two weeks of a projected 2-to-3 weeks shutdown period, which would seem to be a good sign. It will still take him a while to ramp things back up, however, so a return before the end of the month would still appear unlikely.

It's still a ways off but the idea of having a healthy Lowe back by July is welcome for a Rays team that likes to play matchups and have options with the lineup.

Lowe often sits against left-handed pitchers but he's a powerful asset in the lineup that is missed against righties. He's hitting just .199 this year but does have nine homers, 29 RBIs and three stolen bases. He hit 39 home runs back in the 2021 season, the last season he was fully healthy.

The Rays and Orioles get going at 6:40 p.m. on Tuesday.

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