Brandon Lowe does not make a lick of sense for SF Giants unless there is a trade

While everyone expects the SF Giants to focus pretty exclusively on adding pitching this offseason, one MLB insider thinks they may try to add some pop on the position player side. Jim Bowden of The Athletic just dropped an article predicting where his top-40 MLB free agents will sign and for how much. He sees several players as a fit for the Giants and the most surprising was second baseman Brandon Lowe.

In 2026 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Lowe had a really good year hitting .260/.331/.493 with 35 home runs and 96 runs batted in across 150 games. That’s a pretty outstanding season but he’d still be a bit of an odd fit on a Giants team that currently has a second baseman in Casey Schmitt.

Bowden projects he will get a three-year, $45 million deal which isn’t too insane but would the Giants really want to pay that much when they already have a power-hitting second baseman for a fraction of the cost? Had Schmitt not gotten injured in 2026, there’s a chance he would’ve reached 30 home runs on the season.

The only way to make that work would be to trade Schmitt which seems like a distinct possibility. For a team that needs pitching, it may not be the worst idea to trade Schmitt to a team like the Seattle Mariners in exchange for a starter. 

They could also move Schmitt to left field and just hope that he improves in the outfield even though he’s been accustomed to playing the infield pretty much his entire career.

Moving Schmitt to left and signing Lowe to play second would give the lineup a ton of pop. On paper they’d have five or six hitters who could potentially hit 30 homers in a season which is exciting, but the Giants need to do a better job preventing runs as the offense wasn’t really the main issue for much of 2026.

Giants should focus on adding pitching over more power

It would be an interesting experiment to sign a premium power bat to play second base a year after signing a premium contact bat to play second base with Luis Arraez. Signing Lowe, a 32-year-old who has dealt with injury issues across his career, to anything more than a one-year deal would be pretty risky especially when the Giants already have so much money tied up in the infield.

Plus, no one knows how well Lowe’s power would translate to Oracle Park. He’s a left-handed hitter who has only hit one homer in 11 career games at Oracle. That’s a small sample size but we know lefties can get burned by the park’s dimension.

It’s interesting to think about, but with Schmitt already there it’s probably smarter to just spend whatever money you’d spend on Lowe on a pitcher instead. 

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