Royce Lewis spent part of May in Triple-A trying to find his game again, and the Twins got exactly what they were after.
When Minnesota sent him down on May 19, Lewis was hitting .163/.261/.279. The swing that once looked built for October had gone flat, and the player who had once shrugged off the idea of slumps was suddenly living in one.
A year after saying, “I don’t do that slump thing” on June 20, 2024, Lewis had hit .184/.244/.313 with eight homers and 37 RBI. Last season, he finished at .237/.283/.388, 15% worse than league average, while sliding down the defensive ladder from third base to first.
The Twins wanted a change. Last year, they asked Lewis to adjust his swing and move positions, but he pushed back, saying it would hurt him in arbitration.
This season, Derek Shelton and his staff finally got through. Maybe it was the barbecue they shared near Lewis’ home in the Dallas area.
Maybe it was the reality that Lewis was playing his way out of Minnesota’s plans. Either way, the message landed.
In St. Paul, Lewis worked at first and second base and, just as importantly, on his “gather” at the plate - the load before the swing, the place where the hands sit, the length of the stride, all of it.
Before the demotion, his hips and shoulders were too high, which narrowed the margin for contact. Now he’s shifted his weight from his back foot to the front side of his body.
“If I’m angled up and my hands are trying to swing down, that’s an X,” he said, demonstrating by making an X in front of him with his arms. “If the ball doesn’t hit in the middle of that X perfectly, I’m not going to hit the ball.”
The adjustment has given him a flatter path and a wider strike zone to work with. Lewis said his timing wasn’t the issue; he was lunging and cutting down the number of pitches he could drive.
“The whole thing I was trying to do was just stay over the center of mass,” he said, explaining how he changed his swing. “My belly button [is] center mass, so I need to keep my head forward and then just like let my swing do its thing.”
Lewis has dealt with injuries throughout his career, and he believes that may have played a role in how his swing drifted. Whatever the reason, the results since his June 6 recall have been much better. He’s hitting .284/.345/.507 since coming back, and he’s been more aggressive without being reckless.
Derek Shelton has noticed the difference.
“He’s taking really good swings,” said manager Derek Shelton. “We’ve talked about it before. We’ve talked about the aggressiveness, we’ve talked about the balls that he’s swinging and fouling off: He’s right on them, and that’s really good to see.”
The Twins are getting more consistent at-bats from Lewis now, and he’s turning that into production. He isn’t launching grand slams the way he did in 2023, but he’s still coming through when it matters. A day after Jeremy Zoll said Minnesota would be buyers at the deadline, Lewis delivered a game-winning triple against the Kansas City Royals.
Minnesota still has work to do. Even after adding pitching at the deadline, the Twins are not a .500 team. The rotation remains short on quality starting pitching, especially with Joe Ryan out, so the offense and bullpen will have to keep carrying the load down the stretch and into the playoffs.
The Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians still have better odds of reaching the postseason. Byron Buxton’s return should help the defense and lengthen the lineup. But the Twins also need younger pieces like Lewis, Brooks Lee, and Luke Keaschall to perform at their level.
For now, Lewis has done his part since returning from St. Paul. The swing tweak has put him back in range of the player Minnesota thought it had the last time it played in the postseason, and that matters for a club that needs him to look like a franchise cornerstone again.
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