St. Paul – Triple-A isn’t the place Royce Lewis wants to be right now. Still, he plans to make the most out of his time in St. Paul after the Minnesota Twins optioned him on Tuesday, May 19.
Minnesota benched Lewis against the Houston Astros on Monday, May 18. After they won 6-3, manager Derek Shelton called him into his office, and he and Twins GM Jeremy Zoll told him he’d be going down to Triple-A.
“It was relatively quick,” said Lewis in their conversation. “[Shelton] said, ‘We’re going to option you. Do you have anything to say?’ I was like, ‘There are no words.’ Obviously, you’re upset. Anyone is going to be upset when they get demoted in their job, but that’s life. You just have to keep working hard and figure it out.”
Royce Lewis is ready to put in the work to figure out what has gone wrong this season. According to Lewis, the setup in his swing has been the issue causing him to hit .163/.261/.279 with a 31.1% strikeout rate and 10.1% walk rate in 119 plate appearances to start the year.
“It’s not my swing,” he said. “It’s actually just the part of getting to my swing. It’s like what I call the gather. I’m just trying to fix that and make sure my hands are out in front of my core. Little things, man. This is baseball stuff.”
It’s not unusual to see struggling players be demoted back to Triple-A at this point in the season so they can play in a less pressure-filled environment to get themselves right for the rest of the year. Just six days before the Twins optioned Lewis, they sent down Matt Wallner, who had been hitting .167/.259/.292 with a 39.3% strikeout rate and 7.4% walk rate.
A year ago, the Twins sent Jose Miranda and Edouard Julien down after bad starts to the season. However, Minnesota gave Lewis more major-league time than it did to Miranda and Julien. Lewis’ pedigree of success and status as a former first overall pick in any MLB Draft Class separates him from Miranda and Julien.
“Anytime a guy gets sent down, things aren’t going the way they want them to go,” said Saints manager Brian Dinkelman. “Just to get him to the player he was previously and have some confidence, and go out there every day, good at-bats, hit the ball hard.”
With all the notoriety surrounding Lewis since he was 18, it was shocking to see him optioned at age 26. Some people have wondered if the same Lewis from his breakout rookie campaign in 2023 is still in there, and Lewis assures that he’s still the same despite the results of his season.
“I was definitely more amped and juiced up for those [playoff games],” he said. “But no, I don’t think you see a different player, per se. Like I said, you’ve just got to fix some things, yeah, that’s about it.”
“He’s a really skilled player, he’s a really good player,” said Saints hitting coach Shawn Schlechter. “There’s a reason why he’s the caliber of player he is, right?
“That’s why he gets so much praise, and we’ve seen glimpses of the superstar type player that he is at the highest level, even in some of the biggest moments when you talk about the last playoff run in 2023. He was a key player in that lineup, and he’s done some phenomenal things.”
Before joining the Saints on Thursday, Royce Lewis took a couple of days away from the ballpark to decompress, find the details of some of his flaws from this season, and get the time and support he needed from his family. His agent Scott Boras reached out to him personally in his days away from the field, extending support to the kid he first scouted when he was 10 years old.
“For Scott to come to bat for me and show me why I hired the best agent in the world, it was impressive,” said Lewis. “So he gave me a lot of information that I can work off of and build off of, and hopefully put that to good use no matter where I’m playing.”
Lewis put some of those words of wisdom and help from Boras in his first at-bat with the Saints Thursday night. To prove that some of the old Lewis was there, he drilled the first pitch he swung at over the left-center field fence for a 2-run home run that scored him and Kaelen Culpepper.
Lewis went 0-for-3 the rest of the night, but the home run set the tone he was looking for in his return to Triple-A. Lewis and Wallner will be at Triple-A for the foreseeable future. The Twins will only recall them soon if their bench is light due to injuries.
The Twins want to give both of them the hard reset they need to reach their potential again. If that takes up to two months and means they won’t be back until after the All-Star break, then that’s how long it will take.
“I think my talent speaks for itself, and I see it every day, honestly,” Royce Lewis said. “It’s in the work that unfortunately you guys don’t get to see, so you think I suck, and whatever it is.
“That’s fine. You can judge me by that. It’s real. It hasn’t happened yet. I hit balls hard that got caught. That’s all part of baseball. Confidence? I’m not knocked down by any means. Shoot, I do it every day before a game.”
“I think our goal is just to get him back in line with that, and I think it’s a little bit easier for him to work through it here without having to stare in the face of performance in the lineup in the big leagues,” said Schlecter. “Here, I think he has some time to be able to digest and work through, not only the swing changes, but also work through the stressors of success versus failure.”
