Miami Marlins Best To Wear Jersey Number Series No. 19: Mike Lowell

If the Miami Marlins EVER retire a number, it has to be No. 19, right?

Honestly, the temptation was strong here to not even go with a player, at least not in the title.

Is there a point to even tell you the honorable mentions for this one? Three of the Top 15 hitters in Miami Marlins franchise history have worn No. 19 on their backs, along with one Top 5 pitcher. Two world champions, one no-hitter thrower, three members of three of Miami's four playoff teams. As many a Game of Thrones meme will tell you, at least among Marlins fans, "it is known." And while I'm sure there are a couple ardent John Roskos or Rob Brantly 'shippers out there, I can't imagine there was ever a great deal of intrigue as to who the final answer to this riddle was going to be.

That'd be Mike Lowell, pride of Florida International University, best third baseman in Marlins history, World Series champion, and Franchise Four member.

Again, tough call to stick with the WAR math metric that Marlin Maniac's Best To Wear The Miami Marlins Jersey Number has been following in this series. Putting Lowell in at this spot means leaving Jeff Conine out, the only Top 10 position player by WAR in Marlins history that will be left off of this list, and that just feels wrong. Of course, that sentence would be every bit as true if the order of those names were flipped. Someone great was getting left out- such is the magic of No. 19 in team history. However, the numbers don't lie. Lowell's career Marlins line of 14.1 WAR would even edge out Conine's total Marlins tenure of 13.7 and clearly eclipses the 11.1 WAR he racked up in the No. 19 jersey. Anibal Sanchez (10.2) and Miguel Rojas (8.9) bring up the rear.

As for Lowell, what's not to love about Miami's greatest third baseman? Even if a dive into the advanced stats yielded a lot of evidence that this wasn't crime against humanity I thought it was at the time, the fact Lowell only won one Gold Glove still probably has way more to do with external factors than any real reflection of his excellent glovework. Particularly since awards voters weren't exactly hip to all those advanced stats yet. So we'll just agree to shamelessly blame the fact more people watched the Philadelphia Phillies and St. Louis Cardinals as the reason Lowell only beat out Scott Rolen once for the award in his career, rather than acknowledge that Rolen might have been the superior defender. No matter what view one chooses to take there, it is only to Lowell's credit that it took that kind of Hall of Fame level talent to surpass him.

It also didn't help that Miami's entire infield was doing Gold Glove caliber things at that time, with at least one member winning one every year from 2003-2005. While not always the case, there is often a tendency to want to spread those things around. Between that and the small market issue, it was just going to be tough for Lowell to break through more than once, if at all.

All this and we haven't even mentioned his bat yet.

Do you like doubles? The franchise leader has you covered with 241. Lowell is Top 4 in games played (981), home runs (143), and total bases (1641). He's actually second all-time in RBIs with 578, trailing only Giancarlo Stanton. The 32 home runs he led the club with in 2003 might not seem like much these days, but at the time it was the second best homer finish in franchise history- and he reached it despite missing an entire month of the season. Plenty of storylines overshadowed it then and since, but it was one of the more exciting offensive campaigns a Marlins player has authored.

Sooo...time to retire No. 19, right? No current member of the team is wearing the number after Owen Caissie chose not to bring it over from his time with the Cubs last season, so the circumstances are once again right to do so. Then again, as alluded to earlier, the team did allow Rob Brantly to wear it just last season. While that decision was an even bigger crime than it was when he was allowed to wear it in 2012 and 2013, it would seem to suggest retiring the number isn't high on the to do list of the Marlins front office.

If the Marlins ever do decide to retire No. 19 though, and do feel the need to slap a name on it, the name needs to be Mike Lowell.