The Blue Jays are digging into the second-base market, and Brandon Lowe has quickly emerged as the name to watch.
Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi and Ben Nicholson-Smith reported Tuesday that Toronto is among the teams interested in Lowe, and the 32-year-old second baseman has already had preliminary talks with the club. On paper, the fit makes plenty of sense.
Lowe just put together a huge season for Pittsburgh in 2026, batting .260/.331/.493 with 35 home runs and 96 RBI across 150 games. That production was good for a 5.3 bWAR season, and he also finished as a Gold Glove finalist at second base.
The power is the obvious draw. Toronto finished last in baseball with 648 runs and 152 home runs, so Lowe’s bat would be a major injection of thump.
His 35 homers alone would have led the Blue Jays. The numbers underneath the surface back it up, too: a 121 wRC+, .233 isolated power, a 91.0 mph average exit velocity, a 12.4 percent barrel rate and a 45.8 percent hard-hit rate.
That’s the kind of contact profile Toronto badly needs after its quiet 2026 offense.
There’s a catch, though, and it’s not a small one. Lowe received a $23.15-million qualifying offer from Pittsburgh, with the decision deadline set for Nov. 17 at 4 p.m.
ET. If the Blue Jays sign him, they would give up their second- and fifth-highest draft picks, along with $1 million in international bonus pool space.
Then there’s the money on top of the draft-pick hit. Nicholson-Smith projected a three-year, $72-million deal with an AAV of $24 million. That’s not outrageous for a player of Lowe’s caliber, but it does come with a lot of moving parts for Toronto to weigh.
If that price tag gets too steep, Jazz Chisholm Jr. is sitting there as a fallback option, and he comes without the qualifying-offer baggage. The Yankees did not extend Chisholm the $23.15-million offer, so he reached free agency without draft-pick compensation attached.
Chisholm would also check some of the same boxes for Toronto. He’s a left-handed hitter, which would help balance a lineup built around right-handed middle-of-the-order bats like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Alejandro Kirk and Kazuma Okamoto.
He could also bump Ernie Clement back into a super-utility role. Ross Atkins has already said Clement has to “earn every bit” of the second base job in 2027.
There’s been outside buzz on Chisholm as well. MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand named the Blue Jays as a landing spot, and Keegan Matheson wrote that Chisholm’s baserunning and above-average defense fit a very “Blue Jays” profile, especially with the club planning to obsess over baserunning in 2027.
The downside is that Chisholm is coming off a shaky year at the plate. After a 31-homer, 31-steal season in 2025, he hit .231/.312/.399 with 19 home runs and 55 RBI in 137 games in 2026.
His .711 OPS was more than 100 points below the .813 mark he posted the year before. Even so, he still swiped a career-high 41 bases and ranked in the 98th percentile with 15 outs above average at second base.
The strikeouts were the concern, with 157, also a career high, but at 28 years old, the rebound case is easy enough to make.
And Toronto isn’t the only club with its eye on this corner of the market. The Yankees will be looking for a Chisholm replacement, which could end up being Lowe. The New York Post’s Jon Heyman reported that New York could check in on Lowe and Luis Arraez, though nothing has been confirmed.
So the Blue Jays have a real fork in the road here. Lowe is the bigger bat, but he comes with the qualifying-offer cost and a heavier financial commitment.
Chisholm offers a cleaner path into the market and a chance to upgrade at second without surrendering draft capital. Either way, this is the kind of decision that could ripple through the AL East next season.
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