A good hands guy

Lowrie proving to be smooth on D

Watching Sox shortstop Jed Lowrie play defense is like viewing the perfect marriage of brainpower and skill on the baseball diamond.

The young infielder ascended through the Sox organization as a shortstop after playing second base at Stanford, but questions lingered about his arm, his range and his positional future at the big league level.

While a 70-game stretch is a miniscule sample size to evaluate what Lowrie will eventually settle into as an offensive player, the 24-year-old has been better than advertised while roaming the infield at shortstop.

Lowrie entered last night’s game having played error-free ball in 42 games at shortstop, and is flashing adequate range at the position.

“He’s always had really good, soft hands and a lot of it has been about putting himself in the proper position when he sets himself,” said Sox first base/infield coach Luis Alicea. “The study in his film and the studying of the hitters have definitely done a lot to increase his range.”

While Lowrie certainly may be better than originally given credit for, the cerebral switch-hitter has taken full advantage of every resource available to him.

In some ways, studying video of hitting tendencies and swing paths in particular counts against certain pitchers has allowed Lowrie to cheat on defense. Lowrie pointed to a perfect example earlier this season when scouting reports told him to shade Toronto’s Lyle Overbay toward the middle of the diamond. Overbay hit a hot-shot liner that Lowrie was in perfect position to snare — a ball that would have been a difficult diving play if he had positioned himself normally and very likely would have been a hit.

It’s the perfect example of the preparation that all Sox infielders go over with Alicea prior to a game, and it’s something that’s augmented Lowrie’s glove game.

“Before every game Luis and I will go over kind of a ‘cheat sheet’ scouting report on every player on the other team,” said Lowrie. “You go over spray charts and tendencies, and then after that you just kind of go on feel as to how he’s swinging the bat and how the pitcher is throwing.

“There’s simply no comparison between the information I have now and what I had in the minor leagues,” added Lowrie.