With a walk-off homer under his belt, along with a sense of accomplishment he had serious doubts would be an option this season, Jed Lowrie uttered one more thing before leaving the Red Sox' clubhouse Saturday night.

"People have short memories," said the hero of the Red Sox' 5-4, 11-inning win over the Blue Jays.

Not Jason McLeod.

"When we took Jed we thought we were getting a major league player who is going to play in the big leagues, with a very good possibility that he was going to play in the big leagues for a long time," said McLeod, the former Red Sox amateur scouting director and now serves as the San Diego Padres assistant general manager.

"We probably saw Jed out of Stanford like we saw [Dustin] Pedroia out of ASU. Dustin surpassed certainly what I thought he would do. When we took Dustin we didn't think he was going to be there, he was, we took him and we were getting a player who was limited athletically or what-not, but he is a very good player who will play in the major leagues for a long time. We evaluated kind of the same. With Jed we said, 'This guy is going to be a good player.' He just hasn't been able to show it consistently because he hasn't been able to stay on the field."

Fortunately for the Red Sox, Lowrie was on the field Saturday night.

Those with the kind of short-term memories the 26-year-old described upon his exit from Fenway Park will be holding onto the blast into the Red Sox bullpen, leading off the 11th. It not only handed a Red Sox a much-needed victory, but also allowed for the dismissal of any ill-will harbored by Lowrie's dropped pop-up at first base the half-inning before.

But what it should have done was open up the memory banks for those who had forgotten just how good his player had been, and still can be.

There was a reason McLeod compared Lowrie to Pedroia, the poster boy for the Sox' player development system. It is also no coincidence that the Stanford product's name was being bandied about by the likes of Ryan Zimmerman (the 4th pick in the 2005 draft) and Troy Tulowitzki (7th overall that year).

• Lowrie won the Pac-10 Triple Crown as a sophomore. 
• He played on Team USA. 
• He was the 45th pick in the '05 draft (three behind Clay Buchholz). 
• He excelled in major league spring training just a year after being drafted while Pedroia was hurt. 
• He reached the big leagues in 2008 and proceeded to become the Red Sox' starting shortstop during their postseason run. (Don't forget his walk-off, ninth-inning single in the Sox' Game 4 win over the Angels in the '08 American League Division Series.)
• He entered the '09 spring training in competition for the starting shortstop job with Julio Lugo, and hit .400 during his stint before succumbing to an injury to his left wrist (which would eventually require surgery).
• And then, there was Saturday night.

"It seems like every time he has been on the cusp, where he's going to get a long look at the major league level, something happens," said McLeod.

And that has been the problem, which nobody is more aware of than Lowrie.

First there was Lugo, then the wrist injury, which was followed by the signing of Marco Scutaro.

"I was certainly aware of it, but I certainly don't come to the ballpark thinking I have to be better than Scutaro or better than Lugo," said Lowrie of the wave of obstacles. "These guys are my teammates. The more that they  push me and the more that I push them the better we are. That's the best way to approach the game because it doesn't do any good to have any jealous thoughts. I'm certainly aware of it, but it doesn't really change the way I approach. I'm just going to continue to be me."

All of it was then piggy-backed by a bout of mononucleosis that put more doubt in Lowrie's head than any of his competition did.

"When I was in Fort Myers with mono I wasn't thinking about playing," he said. "I was lying in bed or the couch sleeping 20 hours a day. I wasn't thinking about baseball at that point. I knew in my heart that I would play again, but I wasn't focused on it at that time.

"For the first month and a half it was quite a bit," Lowrie later added. "For the first three weeks I would report to the field and go right back to sleep. Just to show them I was alive. Being in Fort Myers during the year is never where you want to be. But I could have been in Las Vegas and had a miserable time. I really felt terrible and like I said before it makes this that much better."

What the time away from baseball did do was two-fold. First, it allowed Lowrie a new perspective.

"I'm just hoping I continue to stay healthy because I've showed what I can do when I'm healthy," he said. "That's all I can ask for. My perspective on this has changed so much. All I can do is be healthy. If you can't be on the field because of some sickness it doesn't do you any good. Honestly, I just want to be healthy."

What the hiatus also accomplished was getting his wrist healthy. There was perhaps no better example of Lowrie's physical improvement than the game-winning homer, which came against Blue Jays' reliever Casey Janssen while hitting from the left side of the plate.

From 2008-09, because of the weakened state of his wrist, Lowrie only hit .201 as a lefty hitter compared to .313 from the right side. This season, in 20 games, his average as a left-handed hitter is a respectable .273 (compared to .346 from the right side). Perhaps most encouraging is the fact that the majority of his power is coming as a lefty hitter, with seven of his 10 extra-base hits being hit off righty pitchers.

"It's a tremendous difference," said Red Sox hitting coach Dave Magadan. "For well over a year left-handed he had no strength in the top hand, he was losing the barrel and he was hitting a lot of lazy fly balls to left field. Right away you could see from both sides, but especially left-handed, he had that pop back in his bat, and [Saturday night] was a good example."

And a good reminder.

"I really didn't know if I would play this year," Lowrie said. "It feels good to be back."