MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 They love what Royce Lewis is showing them; the Minnesota Twins simply want to see more.<\/p>\n
Two weeks after he looked lost enough at the plate to merit a demotion to Triple-A St. Paul, Lewis is doing everything the Twins could wish for. The hope was that by moving to the low-pressure environment of Triple A, Lewis would forget about his dismal start to the season and begin implementing swing changes without worrying about results.<\/p>\n
Not only is Lewis making more contact at Triple A, but he easily looks more comfortable at the plate and is smacking the ball all over the ballpark. While the Twins were knocking off the Chicago White Sox 6-4 across town at Target Field on Tuesday night, Lewis went deep twice more in St. Paul, his sixth and seventh homers in 10 games with the Saints.<\/p>\n
Including Tuesday\u2019s numbers, Lewis is batting .341\/.413\/.927 with three doubles and 14 RBIs in 46 plate appearances since being sent down. Now that he\u2019s performing, the Twins want to see him continue to prove he\u2019s ready to return to the majors.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s gone down there, he\u2019s worked, and he\u2019s had good at-bats,\u201d Twins manager Derek Shelton said. \u201cA lot of times, the initial perception is when you send someone down like you\u2019re down on them. \u2026 The best version of us is with Royce Lewis in our lineup. I\u2019m pleased with what he\u2019s doing. He needs to continue to build off it.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the Twins decided to send him to St. Paul, Lewis looked nothing like his peak self. Less than three years ago, Lewis starred when healthy during the 2023 season, including an amazing postseason showing.<\/p>\n
Though he\u2019d struggled over the past two seasons, nothing was on this level.<\/p>\n
Before his April injury list stint, Lewis owned a healthy career 21.4 percent strikeout rate. After he returned, Lewis struck out 25 times in 74 trips to the plate (33.7 percent).<\/p>\n
Lewis looked particularly lost in his final game May 17, offering at 14 of the 15 pitches he saw, including two fouled-off bunt attempts. He struck out three times in three trips before the Twins pinch hit for him.<\/p>\n
Overall, Lewis is batting .163\/.261\/.279 with three homers in 31 big-league games this season.<\/p>\n
Though the reason for their struggles was different, Lewis\u2019 poor play was reminiscent of a 2018 slump that resulted in a Miguel San\u00f3 demotion to Single-A Fort Myers. After breaking his leg late in the 2017 season, San\u00f3 required surgery and was physically incapable. He was sent to Fort Myers essentially to take part in a physical overhaul and to rediscover his swing.<\/p>\n
Whereas San\u00f3\u2019s struggles were physical, Lewis\u2019 seemed more of the mental variety.<\/p>\n
But given how much both played in the big leagues before an in-season demotion, The Athletic contacted San\u00f3\u2019s manager, Paul Molitor, last month for his take. Back in 2018, Molitor said demoting San\u00f3 was one of the most difficult decisions of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re trying to think about your team and what\u2019s best and fair to the other players in terms of putting your best look out there to try to win,\u201d Molitor said. \u201cAnd you\u2019re also mindful of the player, especially when they\u2019re talented and they\u2019re good people. \u2026 You don\u2019t get much better than Royce Lewis as far as the attitude, the energy he can bring. But you could feel that this was starting to get to that point where something had to be done. You couldn\u2019t keep going one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Molitor\u2019s bench coach at the time, Shelton remembers the gravity of the moment in June 2018. One of the faces of the franchise, San\u00f3 finished third in Rookie of the Year voting in 2015 and was an All-Star in 2017.<\/p>\n
Though he struggled the remainder of the 2018 season, San\u00f3 blasted 34 homers and finished the season with a .923 OPS for the 2019 squad, Shelton pointed out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a big moment, but I think if you go back and look at 2019, at that point, it was the best thing for Miguel San\u00f3,\u201d Shelton said. \u201cObviously, that\u2019s why we made that decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having seen Lewis struggle, Molitor wasn\u2019t surprised by the timing of the Twins\u2019 decision. Lewis\u2019 bunting twice for a single May 17 stood out.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot that it was a horrible play, but it\u2019s just not something you would see him do when he was in the right frame of mind,\u201d Molitor said. \u201cWhen you know what your numbers are, that people are talking, you force things. You don\u2019t let the game come to you. \u2026 It\u2019s kind of a crossroads for Royce as it was for Miguel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Same as the Twins\u2019 current brain trust, Molitor expressed faith Lewis can recover.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to go into any prediction or guarantees or what his career path is going to look like,\u201d Molitor said. \u201cBut I would be willing to wager that it\u2019s going to work out for him eventually. I\u2019d be on the side of the optimism.\u201d<\/p>\n
After his demotion, Lewis took two days off before reporting to St. Paul on May 21. In that window, Lewis identified areas of his swing he wanted to get back to and emphasized it to the Twins.<\/p>\n
On the first pitch of his assignment, Lewis ripped a 91 mph cutter from Omaha\u2019s Mitch Spence for a home run. He hasn\u2019t slowed down, ripping laser after laser across the minor leagues.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Lewis ripped a 95 mph fastball for a solo homer in his second at-bat, a 114.1 mph laser off the bat. He flied out to the fence in center in his third at-bat (103.4 mph exit velocity) before later homering again.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Lewis homered and doubled, the latter coming off his bat at 115.7 mph, the fastest exit velo of his career.<\/p>\n
As the social media clips have begun to compile, Twins teammates can\u2019t help but notice Lewis\u2019 success. They see Lewis hitting some of the same pitches he missed a few weeks ago. Yes, there\u2019s a big gap between Triple-A pitching and the big leagues. Still, it\u2019s not hard to see that Lewis seems freer and easier and capable of getting into his swing. Through 46 plate appearances, Lewis has struck out only 10 times, good for 21.7 percent.<\/p>\n
The Twins love what they\u2019re seeing. They just want to see it continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been really encouraging to see him go down and get a reset,\u201d general manager Jeremy Zoll said. \u201cI do think it was good for him to take a couple of days for a breather. He had some really productive conversations in a host of different directions internally and externally. He came in ready to go. If you look at the quality of swings and some of the swings he\u2019s put on the ball on homers and other damage he\u2019s doing, I think there are some really positive strides and improvement there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 They love what Royce Lewis is showing them; the Minnesota Twins simply want to see more.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,2364,591,85],"class_list":["post-712874","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\/712874","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=712874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}