MINNEAPOLIS — It wasn’t as if Jed Lowrie hadn’t been expecting it.

Lowrie went to Stanford. He has smarts. He didn’t need the Boston Red Sox to tell him that when they promoted him from Pawtucket on April 10 because of an injury to Mike Lowell that the length of his stay in the big leagues was directly proportional to the length of time Lowell or some other injured player needed to heal.

After all, Lowrie’s resumé showed only about 10 days of Triple-A experience. It’s just that the timing of Lowrie’s demotion to Pawtucket yesterday was a little ironic.

On Saturday night, as a last-minute replacement for shortstop Julio Lugo (mild concussion), Lowrie bashed the first homer of his big-league career and fell a triple shy of the cycle in raising his average to .312 over 42 at-bats for Boston.

But Alex Cora came off the disabled list yesterday, so manager Terry Francona called Lowrie to tell him he was being optioned back to Pawtucket. Lowrie, the 45th pick overall in the 2005 draft, took the news in stride.

“As a player you don’t want that to happen, but I understand the role the team has for me, to come up here if needed to help out as much as I can. I came up under the pretense that some guys were going on the DL and I’d just be filling in until they came back,” said Lowrie, dressed in a pressed dress shirt with color-coordinated tie, standing in a hallway as the rest of the Red Sox pulled on their uniforms in preparation for last night’s game against the Minnesota Twins at the Metrodome.

Lowrie, 24, generally made a good impression with Francona, who used him at shortstop, his natural position in the Sox’ organization, as well as at second base and third base.

“For a young player he’s got a real good way at helping us win games,” said Francona. “He hasn’t done anything that would make you think you need to take him off shortstop unless a guy (at another infield position) gets hurt and then you can put him over there, too. He’s an interesting player.”

Lowrie will join Pawtucket today, in time for the PawSox’ game against Norfolk, and then tomorrow will travel to Buffalo with the rest of his Triple-A teammates for the start of a road trip. He said he expected the PawSox would use him mostly at shortstop, with a day here or there at second and third.

His attitude will be positive when he rejoins the PawSox, he said yesterday.

“I’ll just go down and work on the things I’ve been working on up here,” said Lowrie, a 6-foot, 180-pound switch hitter. “You don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking ‘I should be up here.’ ”

Now Lowrie will take a step down to the minors to get more Triple-A experience, but there’s no doubt in the Sox’ mind that some day soon he’ll be making that step back up to the majors to stay.

skrasner@projo.com