Royce Lewis still has the kind of bat speed that makes you believe the big damage is in there somewhere. The problem is that belief keeps running headfirst into the version of him Minnesota has gotten for the last two seasons.
Lewis’ power has backed up since 2024, the last year he posted a slugging percentage at or above .450. Before that, he looked like he was breaking through in a real way: 15 home runs, 52 RBIs and a 152 wRC+ in just 239 plate appearances at age 24. That was the loud, dangerous version of Lewis people still picture when they think about his 2023 postseason run.
What followed has been a much harder sell. He just finished his second straight season with an 85 wRC+, the worst mark of his career, and paired it with a .227 batting average and a .380 slugging percentage.
His 15 home runs in 509 plate appearances don’t fully capture how uneven the production has been. Since 2024, nine players on the team have topped his fWAR, and eight have done it over the last two seasons.
The biggest issue is consistency, and that’s what keeps hanging over his future in Minnesota. The offensive upside is obvious enough. The conversion from talent to actual production has not been.
The deeper numbers are just as concerning. Lewis finished with the worst OPS of his career, a .667, even though he posted .671 in 2025.
His strikeout rate climbed to a career-high 25.5%, and the whiff numbers against certain pitch types are brutal: he finished with a 40% whiff rate against both breaking pitches and offspeed pitches. In 2023, that looked like a different hitter entirely.
He hit .320 against offspeed pitches, .270 against breaking pitches and .343 against fastballs.
That version has not come back. Instead, the swing and the approach have drifted away from the player who once looked like he could punish everything in the zone.
Lewis still has the tools to be more than this. He finished in the 85th percentile in bat speed and in the 71st percentile in Barrel%.
There’s enough raw force in the bat for better contact to mean better results. The issue is how often the swing misses, and his whiff rate sat in the 7th percentile.
A real shift in approach would go a long way for him. He can chase the hitter who lit up the postseason in 2023, but he also needs to become more than the player he’s been over the last two seasons.
One telling number says plenty about how he’s been getting there: 50.7% of his RBIs have come via the home run. That may sound impressive, but it also reflects how much he has relied on power and how little he has put the ball in play.
That runs against the kind of offensive philosophy that helped the 2026 Twins become a lineup worth respecting and a team built to contend.
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