FORT MYERS, Florida – Shortstop Royce Lewis, the top contender for the twins’ organization, will miss the entire 2021 season due to a tear in his right ACL, baseball operations president Derek Falvey announced on Wednesday.
Lewis will fly to the twin cities and undergo reconstruction surgery on Friday with Dr. Christopher Camp, the club’s orthopedic surgeon. The twins will not be clear about Lewis’ recovery schedule until the procedure is completed, but Falvey said players typically take nine to 12 months to return to the full game after this type of surgery.
It is yet another blow to the previous draft No. 1 overall and MLB Pipeline No. 17 overall perspective, which will spend two entire seasons without appearing in a competitive game. Although Lewis spent the entire 2020 season at the Twins’ alternative training location in St. Paul, Minnesota, his last game action was in the Arizona Fall League 19, where he won the league’s most valuable player award. If he returns in time for the 22 Minor League season, he will have gone 29 months without showing up for the game.
“A player like Royce has incredible and raw athleticism, and the refined skills in baseball were coming,” said Falvey. “It is disappointing, for sure, because this is a waste of development time for him, but we will only have to ensure that when he comes back he receives as many repetitions as possible in the most creative way possible. This will lead to the next steps. His development . “
The twins are not sure when or how Lewis suffered the injury, which only appeared as mild knee pain until Lewis underwent an MRI scan as part of a physical exam in spring training on Monday. According to Falvey, Lewis felt sore while doing some running exercises side by side during the off-season in preparation for the camp, which got worse when Lewis slipped on a piece of ice during the recent Texas winter storms.
Lewis is expected to remain in Twin Cities recovering for several days before returning to Fort Myers to begin his rehabilitation program.
Considering that Lewis is only 21, there is still plenty of time for him to advance in the organization, and that should be a development obstacle, but not a barrier. Still, it’s hard for Lewis and the twins to miss a full season of hitting after a tough 2019 season on the board (a 0.661 two-level OPS) and their mechanical work at the alternate training site in 20, in which he smoothed out the movement. with your hands and became more direct with the bottom half on your swing.
“That job was really worth it for him, and he really started to impact the ball, have competitive strikes and was one of our most productive offensive players at the alternate location,” said farm director Alex Hassan.
Lewis was likely to have started the 2021 season with Double-A Wichita and would continue to progress towards the Major League in the “medium term,” said Falvey.
It is a particularly bad time, considering that this camp would have offered Lewis an excellent opportunity to continue working with mentor figures like Josh Donaldson in the batting cage and Andrelton Simmons in the infield. The latter is a particularly significant consideration, as Lewis has been raw on the shortstop since entering the system and has worked hard to develop his polish and instincts in position.
The timing is also not ideal for the organization, as Lewis will become eligible for the Rule 5 Draft in the coming off-season, and the club will need to add him to the list of 40 players and start using his Secondary League options as part of their delayed progress through the major Minors. It also may not be a quick raise, as Lewis has a career of 0.740 OPS and peaked with just 33 games at Double-A in 2019.
Still, the twins find it difficult to bet against Lewis, not only because of his exceptional athleticism, but also because of his maturity, curiosity and positivity well beyond his years that became clear to players in the club’s major league last spring.
And in typical Lewis style, he is still bringing maturity and positivity to the next challenge.
“Although disappointing, he is Royce – he has a smile on his face, he knows he will have a year of rehabilitation ahead of him, he knows he will have to work hard,” said Falvey. “But he is prepared and ready to do that, and I know that he is looking forward to returning to the field sometime, hopefully, next winter and finally getting ready for the next spring training.”