As the trade deadline nears, the Twins keep circling the same question: do they need to go get another bat?
Maybe. But that might not be the first problem on the list.
If Minnesota is going to hang around in the race through August and September, the bigger urgency looks like the bullpen. The offense, though, has its own fix staring the club right in the face: get more out of Royce Lewis.
Lewis has not given the Twins the season they expected. In 70 games, he is hitting .211 with an 88 wRC+, a steep drop for a player who was supposed to be one of the lineup’s main engines.
And yet the underlying stuff says the bat itself is still there.
According to his Statcast page, Lewis is averaging 74.8 mph in bat speed, the best mark of his career. He also has a 41.4% Hard-Hit rate and a 12.2% Barrel rate, which still point to a hitter capable of doing damage when he squares one up.
The issue is getting there.
His contact rate has slipped from 76.2% last season to 68.2% this year, and his swinging-strike rate has jumped to 14.6%. That gap goes a long way toward explaining why the results have fallen off even though the contact quality remains strong when he actually connects.
This is less about lost power than it is about getting beat before the swing can really matter.
Lewis has had the most trouble against four-seam fastballs. He has a -4 Run Value against that pitch, along with a .186 expected batting average and a 32.2% whiff rate. Sliders and changeups have also given him problems, both producing whiff rates above 40%.
There is still a version of Lewis that can punish mistakes. Against sinkers, he owns a .313 xBA and a .556 xSLG, which is the kind of production Minnesota expected to see much more often.
That split tells the story. The power and bat speed have not vanished. Pitchers have simply done a better job of attacking the parts of the zone where Lewis is least comfortable, and he has not yet found the answer.
The heat maps back that up. In 2023, Lewis was producing across most of the strike zone against pitches other than sinkers.
This year, that coverage has narrowed. Opponents have had more success working him up in the zone and especially to the outer half, where his production has fallen off sharply.
So while the Twins can still look for bullpen help before the deadline, that only addresses part of what they need.
The rest depends on what happens in the clubhouse. If Byron Buxton stays healthy, if Ryan Jeffers remains with the team and gets back to being consistent at the plate, and if Lewis turns those underlying tools into actual production, Minnesota’s offense looks a lot different.
The Twins do not need Lewis to reinvent himself. They need him to become the hitter he has already shown he can be.
That is why the biggest offensive upgrade before the deadline may already be in the building.
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Phillies Linked To A Trade Idea That Would Frustrate Fans Fast
Ryan Jeffers has popped up in one of those speculative trade ideas that can get a fan base talking for all the wrong reasons. Bleacher Reports Zachary D. Rymer floated the Minnesota catcher as a fit for Philadelphia, with the proposed return centered on two pitching prospects, but the logic is shaky for a club that already has J.T. Realmuto handling the job and has more obvious needs elsewhere.
For the Phillies, the bigger question is not whether Jeffers would draw interest, but when a move like that would even make sense. A midseason deal for a catcher feels hard to justify unless Realmuto were unavailable, and the article frames Jeffers more as the kind of addition that belongs on an offseason board than in the middle of a season when outfield and pitching help look like the cleaner priorities. [Read more 🡒]