Royce Lewis has entered a crossroads in his tenure with the Minnesota Twins. The former No. 1 overall pick, who looked like a franchise cornerstone during the 2023 postseason, looked lost. He was flailing at pitches out of the zone. The trademark confidence that allowed him to proclaim he “doesn’t do that slump thing” was gone. He even wondered aloud if the Twins even wanted him as the mistakes piled up.
All of this led to Lewis’s demotion to Triple-A on May 19. Lewis, Twins general manager Jeremy Zoll and manager Derek Shelton referred to the move as “a reset.” But it also appeared Minnesota was starting to move on, placing Brooks Lee at Lewis’s old position of first base and clearing the way for top prospect Kaelen Culpepper.
By the time Royce Lewis returned to the majors on Saturday, he was in a different environment, playing second base. But even in his new position and uncertain future, Lewis has an opportunity similar to the one Justin Morneau faced 20 years ago.
Morneau played in some big games in a Twins uniform. But one of the most important games may have come on June 6, 2006.
The Twins were on the road playing the Seattle Mariners, which is close to Morneau’s hometown of New Westminster, B.C. With friends and family in attendance, Morneau went 0-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout. However, he made smaller mistakes, including missing a baserunning sign and a bad take in a high-leverage situation, making his performance worse than the box score.
According to Patrick Reusse, Morneau made things worse after the game, “getting in rather late” after a night of hanging with his hometown friends. The next day, Gardenhire pulled Morneau into his office to inform him he would not be in the starting lineup. However, instead of ripping the young first baseman, Gardenhire reminded him of what he could become.
“He sat me down in Seattle and instead of turning me [downward], he kind of built me up,” Morneau said via Reusse in 2020. “He told me…we expect a lot of you. …We expect you to have a big impact on this ballclub.”
Before the talk, Morneau was hitting .237/.299/.453 with 11 homers and 38 RBI in his first 52 games. The Twins were also lagging as a team, posting a 25-33 record when Gardenhire called Morneau into his office. It became a critical moment in Morneau’s career and also in the franchise’s history. Morneau started to become the player the Twins believed he could be.
Over his final 105 games, Morneau hit .361/.411/.609 with 23 homers and 92 RBI. That performance helped him win the 2006 American League Most Valuable Player Award. It also began one of the most dominant five-year stretches in Twins history, where he hit .298/.372/.528 with 136 homers and 526 RBI from the beginning of the 2006 season through 2010.
The crazy part is that Morneau could have been on his way to more. He was hitting .345/.437/.618 with 18 homers and 56 RBI in the first 81 games of the 2010 campaign, but a concussion he suffered in a second base collision dramatically altered his career. Still, Morneau stands out as one of the best players in recent memory because of that talk in Seattle.
In some ways, it makes it crazy that the Twins called Royce Lewis up almost 20 years to the day that Morneau and Gardenhire had that chat. Lewis was hitting .159/.260/.271 with three homers, 13 RBI and 38 strikeouts in 32 games for the Twins before Sunday’s series finale against the Kansas City Royals. But he showed the game-changing ability is still there, hitting .333/.403/.900 with 10 homers and 22 RBI in 15 games at Triple-A St. Paul.
Twins fans may have watched Lewis’s minor league performance with a cynical eye, noting the 91 mph fastballs and other offerings from pitchers one step away from the majors. But those were pitches Lewis wasn’t hitting with a .155 average and .276 slugging percentage against the fastball this season, according to Baseball Savant.
There could also be a sense of maturity that Morneau gained during his reset. After Lewis expressed concern over a midseason move to second base two years ago, he played the position without consternation during his time in St. Paul. He also made a start at first base, attempting to do what’s best for the team.
“When any player gets demoted, the first thing you look at is how they work and what their attitude was,” Shelton told the Star Tribune on Saturday. “He did a good job. I know it’s been talked about a lot, but Royce Lewis is still our player. … He went down, he did a good job, and he deserves to be back because of the way he performed.”
Expecting Lewis to go full 2006 Morneau may be a reach at this point. Even if he heats up in the majors, it’s unlikely to have a path to the AL Central Division title. Morneau’s teammates included a batting champion (Joe Mauer), a Cy Young Award winner (Johan Santana), a Gold Glove winner (Torii Hunter) and a rookie phenom (Francisco Liriano).
But if Lewis is a productive player on the right side of the infield, the talk about his future could change. It could produce the second act that Morneau had 20 years ago.
