Finally, Royce Lewis

Royce Lewis has almost another Grand Slam. On the base at the top of the seventh inning in Sacramento Tuesday night, A’s right Tyler Ferguson left a sweeper on the exterior edge of the strike zone, while the twins third baseman (two years ago, he hit four of the 18-day spanning four majors – not missing out. A’s midfielder Denzel Clarke couldn’t get to the 100 mph 392-foot drive in time. Instead, both Clarke and the ball were quickly dragged down the wall several feet away from the yard, but still outstanding enough to produce twice the doubles to extend Minnesota’s lead to 8-3, finally breaking Lewis’ latest franchises of futility after 32 hits.

“It’s nice to see the ball hitting grass or dirt [or] walls, Lewis said. “Anything except gloves.”

Lewis turned 26 on Thursday and was already too familiar with such a tough stretcher. This is his third time since he started last September, and he endured a missed rate of at least 22 bats, and although unlike the first two, he had a hard time hitting the ball at least in this game:

This is the latest twist in Lewis’ short career, with Lewis’s short career injury (mainly a leg injury) limiting him 174 games in a portion of four major league seasons. Sometimes, considering that he is the first draft pick in the 2017 amateur draft, he looks like you hope he will. Although most of all 2021 and 22 years lost tears from his right knee ACL, he starred in the twins when he returned to action in 23 years. That season, he hit the tempting .309/.372/.548 (154 WRC+) in 58 games, helping Minnesota win the AL Central and Wild Central series, the first playoff series win in the series. He was missing for a month and a half due to the pressure of italics and ended the regular season with left ham fatigue, and despite returning four home runs in six playoff games, the outstanding performance was limited by the regular season on the injury roster.

Sometimes it is painful to watch this ordeal. Lewis made his debut on the 2024 Opening Day and then scored on Carlos Correa after a second hit to the singles and scored on Carlos Correa and didn’t return to the roster until June 5. Once he did it.

Admittedly, despite being traditional, August 31 is any end point for these divisions. Lewis started four games of the month, including his last home run of the September 1st Japanese season; then from his second set appearance on September 4 to his second set on September 11, he made 0 of 22 shots while hitting nearly half the time, even though he connected, he made a lot of bad contact. After a slight rebound, he ended with a 0-21-for-21 slide (two walks) starting on September 24, dragging his season line to .233/.295/.452 (108 WRC+) in 82 games and 325 games. This kind of skiing is just one of several factors that twins collapse, which kills them.

Unfortunately, the 0-FER didn’t end the season, but before he could steal the game, he had another left ham fatigue in the Grapefruit League game on March 16 and started in Illinois this season. He finally made his debut on May 5 and took a 15-0 walk-up to expand his hit-no-game winning streak to 36 hits and 39 sets-and then stroked one from the Giants’ Erik Miller on May 11. But, after doubling the Guardian’s Jakob Junis in his third set on May 19, he began a drought that stretched for two weeks before finally ending with his doubles Ferguson.

Lewis hits .133/.207/.213 for 19 WRC+. This is still a small sample, and even the worst one with an 80-PA cutoff is not the worst one:

Woof, which is five players from AL Central, including the bride, is going to manage at least 65 WRC+ as the twins pick him up, and two from the Rockies. Lewis has few batsmen on his own hole. What does Massey do in the name of Ewing Kauffman? Joc Pederson is missing the list, he lasts 41 to 41 this year, but now hits a relatively strong 52 WRC+.

Recently, Lewis’ struggles have cost him playing time. He started just three of his first six games before Tuesday, with the Bride and Brooks Lee starting three more twins, who have overcome a slow start and finished second in AL Central with a 33-27 record, enough to get a wildcard spot. Sometimes, the third baseman sounds frustrated. Here’s what he said after last Wednesday’s game, when he was on a 106.3 mph lineup, a 103.4 mph doubles receiver and a 97.2 mph flight rate and a 99.7 mph flight:

“I’m at the point where hope goes away. I just try my best. If I keep playing, they say it’ll find a hole, but I haven’t seen it yet… It’s like a game of shaking the ball now, it’s really true because you know how Wiffle balls keep? That’s how my ball feels.”

Last June 20, when he rebounded from a rare 0-5 three-hit match, the Red Hot Lewis notoriously said, “I don’t do that depressing thing.” Twin fans have since been forced to clarify the point of Lewis being forced to clarify the claim after Monday’s victory in a 10-4 win over the A:

“I want to say spiritually that I don’t participate, ‘I’m 20-0,” Lewis said. “I’m thinking today, ‘It’s Luis Severino. I’ve faced him in the past. I feel good. I know his sinking pieces and his four slits.’ That’s what I want to say.

As Lewis’s no-hit rate shows, he’s been hitting the ball lately. He only had 62 hits this season, so we were back in the small sample field, but the exit speed was steady at 50 BBE Mark at 40 BBE Mark and Barrel rates. The 80 BBE tag that suffered a heavy blow is stable, so he lacks that, but his speed is consistent with his brief history:

Two things stand out. First, Lewis is far from his expected statistics, 96 points lower than Xwoba and 171 points lower than XSLG. This could be a sample size issue, as his gap is larger than Xwoba’s most unfortunate qualifiers (Andrew Vaughn, 88 points in 193 PA) and XSLG (Salvador Perez, 153 points in 173 BBE). Second, even these expected figures are well below the 2023 and ’24 figures, despite his steady export speed.

Much of this is attributed to Lewis’s batting distribution. His ground is slightly higher than usual and pulls the ball much less frequently (27.4%, 19.2 points lower than last year). His air velocity is 11.3%, less than half of last year’s (29.1%), while his air velocity is less than half in 2023 (21%). Lewis drilled into the baseball racer (Savant) and pulled only three fly balls in 2025, one of which was his only home run, defeating Freddy Peralta on May 18 and the other for a double on Tuesday. By comparison, he had 31 Dorago home runs last year and in 2023, he had 7 home runs from 14 fruit flies. He missed an important part of his destiny diet.

As for the reasons, Lewis is not making a particularly bad swing decision. His 27.1% chase rate and 47.4% swing rate are both below his career norms. According to Robert Orr’s Seager Metric, he’s in the 75th percentile, down from last year’s 87th percentile, but there’s still an indicator that he’s very good at identifying and wielding the court where he can do real damage. His 8.4% swing rate and 15.9% strikeout rate are both career lows (excluding his 12 cups of coffee in 2022).

Understandably, Lewis has been tinkering with his batting posture:

Royce Lewis is now ranked 20th in his last 21 set appearances

It looks like he is trying to change things with an upright open attitude pic.twitter.com/mggegh5fxh

— Parker Hagman (@hagemanparker) May 28, 2025

According to Statcast data (not enough to make me match individual dates enough and not include spring training metrics), Lewis has grown from the position of opening up in September 3 last year to 6 degrees in May, to 14 degrees in June, to 14 degrees in June, which is my best guess on May 28. 34.3 in June – He tried to swing. His 73.4 mph bat speed and 34.7% fast swing are consistent with last year, and his 31.4% square rate and 14.9% explosion rate are well ahead of those scores.

“I’m overswinging now if anything,” Lewis said Monday. “I’m trying too hard and then it feels like your head starts bounce up and down and you start missing the court you usually want to hit. I’m trying to slow down slowly.”

Lewis’s more open position increased the angle of his attack direction from 3 degrees to 9 degrees. It is worth noting that he had greater success in his guidance range from 7-9 degrees last June and July, which is different than he had in August 2024 and May 2024 (2-6 degrees).

Lewis is increasingly struggling with the top third of the product in the strike zone, but it seems that some doom has been involved recently:

Those high courts are mainly fastballs. The pitcher makes Lewis’ precious hanging ball or elevation change very little. This year, he faced only five non-Guilters in the top third, with only one being played, a regular fly ball on May 16 on the winemaker’s Jackson Chourio. Two days later, two days later, in his second set appearance, Chourio robs Chourio of a potential game champion, one in eighth of the countryside.

When it doesn’t move forward, it won’t go. Hopefully, the trend of Lewis has turned to Lewis, who is too talented to hang out at the bottom of the WRC+ rankings. Hopefully his next 0 fer still has a long way to go.