{"id":681264,"date":"2026-05-19T17:53:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T17:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/681264\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T17:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T17:53:09","slug":"twins-demote-royce-lewis-to-minor-leagues-amid-slump-at-plate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/681264\/","title":{"rendered":"Twins demote Royce Lewis to minor leagues amid slump at plate"},"content":{"rendered":"

MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 Royce Lewis is indeed headed for a minor-league reset.<\/p>\n

The Minnesota Twins demoted their slumping slugger to Triple-A St. Paul on Tuesday morning, only five days after making a similar decision with Matt Wallner<\/a>, the team announced.<\/p>\n

The Twins are purchasing the contract of veteran infielder Orlando Arcia, who is hitting .318\/.376\/.556 with eight home runs for St. Paul. The team designated reliever Justin Topa for assignment to make space for Arcia on the 40-man roster.<\/p>\n

Along with Lewis, the Twins announced catcher Ryan Jeffers is being placed on the 10-day injured list with a left hamate bone fracture. Jeffers exited Monday\u2019s game several minutes after fouling off a pitch.<\/p>\n

The team also purchased the contract of catcher Alex Jackson from St. Paul and recalled pitcher Travis Adams. To make space on the 40-man roster for Jackson, the Twins transferred pitcher Garrett Acton from the 10-day IL to the 60-day IL.<\/p>\n

Lewis was striking out a career-high 31.1 percent of the time and batting only .163\/.261\/.279 with three home runs and 13 RBIs after 119 plate appearances. His struggles have been pronounced since returning from an IL stint on April 21, with 25 strikeouts in 74 plate appearances and a .380 OPS.<\/p>\n

After working to adjust his swing in the offseason, Lewis got off to a decent start, producing an .822 OPS through his first dozen games. Lewis was walking more than ever and hitting for some power, but he has been out of sorts since spraining his knee in early April.<\/p>\n

Lewis\u2019 slump grew increasingly worse<\/a> over the past two weeks.<\/p>\n

During a two-day break from the lineup to work on his swing, Lewis indicated he was worried about job security, believing the front office wanted him to fail to write him off. Since returning, Lewis struck out 10 times in 30 plate appearances. He also made an uncharacteristic and costly error in Saturday\u2019s one-run loss, whiffing on a potential inning-ending double-play ball that led to a run scoring.<\/p>\n

Originally in a battle for the final roster spot at the end of spring, Arcia has been outstanding all season at St. Paul. The Twins elected to promote Arcia over prospect Kaelen Culpepper, whom they want to further develop before bringing him to the big leagues.<\/p>\n

Selected with the 21st pick of the 2024 MLB Draft, Culpepper is heating up with a .985 OPS and four homers in 67 plate appearances in May. Team officials like what they\u2019ve seen from Culpepper but want to give him more time to work on his defense at shortstop and improve his offensive consistency at the plate.<\/p>\n

Mired in a slump of his own, Topa allowed three earned runs late in Monday\u2019s 6-3 victory over the Houston Astros. Topa posted an 8.05 ERA in 19 innings this season but has a 9.82 ERA in his last 18 appearances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 Royce Lewis is indeed headed for a minor-league reset. The Minnesota Twins demoted their slumping slugger…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,2364,591,85],"class_list":["post-681264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}