SAN ANTONIO — If the Minnesota Twins do move Royce Lewis to second base, his agent seems open to the possibility.
Though he isn’t privy to the team’s plans, agent Scott Boras compared the Twins’ young hitter to a Hall of Fame second baseman at last week’s general managers’ meetings.
“Royce has always been for me kind of a Ryne Sandberg-ish kind of player,” Boras said. “Power, athleticism and (he) certainly has the skill to do something like that. But I don’t make those decisions about where they choose to play him.”
They may be mulling the idea, but the Twins haven’t made up their minds about moving Lewis. In order to free up playing time for others, the Twins unsuccessfully attempted to move Lewis to second base late last season.
Hoping to create playing time at third base for Brooks Lee and Jose Miranda when Carlos Correa eventually returned to the shortstop, the Twins asked Lewis to start working at second base in late August.
Lewis balked multiple times when addressing the switch with the media.
Rather than offer a cliche about doing anything to help the team, Lewis noted he was “terrified” of making a critical defensive mistake at second base in a postseason run. He instead preferred to have time to prepare in spring training to work on footwork, adjusting to balls hit at different angles and mentally approaching a new position.
“If you take a baby out of its crib where it’s safe, it’s going to feel a little bit scared,” Lewis said on Aug. 27. “That’s kind of where I’m at right now.”
A few days after those comments, Lewis made three plays in three tries in his first appearance at second base, logging three innings in a Sept. 1 victory. Three days later, Lewis started at second base and made a costly error, skipping a throw home in a blowout loss at Tampa Bay.
With Lewis also in an offensive freefall — he produced a .535 OPS in 190 plate appearances from Aug. 5 on — the Twins decided to shelve the second base switch for the rest of the regular season.
But it doesn’t mean the Twins won’t consider it for next season.
Moving Lewis to second base opens up playing time for Lee, Miranda and utilityman Willi Castro. There’s also a belief Lewis could thrive at second base, which would be less taxing on his body than his original position, shortstop, while allowing Lee, a much better defender at third, to stick there.
Last week, Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said the Twins aren’t yet committing to moving Lewis because they don’t know what their roster will look like when spring training opens in a little more than three months. But at the very least, they intend to notify Lewis of the possibility to give him ample time to prepare.
“It’s a conversation we’ll have this offseason for sure,” Falvey said. “We’ve already had it to some degree at the end of the season. (Manager Rocco Baldelli is) going to have to have that conversation with Royce, but also certainly talk to Scott (Boras) and the group there. We would just want to make sure he’s as prepped as possible to play and he indicated even at the end of the season if he was prepped and planned for what that’s going to look like, it’s really important. Some of that will depend on the personnel that we acquire, don’t acquire, how it all shakes out. But we want him to stay open-minded to that.”
Odds are the Twins will encounter less resistance from Lewis than they did in August.
Lewis said he felt refreshed as he started slowly ramping up for next season on Oct. 21. Before that, Lewis took two weeks off to decompress after a taxing season full of ups and downs.
Coming off a breakout 2023 season, including a stellar run in the playoffs, Lewis was constantly tested in 2024.
Ready to follow up on his outstanding October, Lewis suffered a right quadriceps injury on Opening Day that resulted in him missing 70 games. He returned to the lineup in June and blasted 10 home runs, quickly reminding all of his star power.
But Lewis suffered a groin injury on July 2 that cost him 16 more games. Lewis returned on July 26 and hit four home runs in his first 11 games back, but then fell off a cliff offensively. Whereas he produced 22 extra-base hits in his first 143 plate appearances, Lewis had only 10 in 182 trips to the plate from Aug. 9 through the end of the season.
Late in the season, Lewis said he was exhausted by a stretch in which he played 58 games over two months, the most he’d ever consistently played in the majors. He was among several young players indirectly criticized by Twins veterans as the team faded and missed the playoffs.
Carlos Correa and Pablo López both made comments about the team’s younger players needing to step up, the shortstop saying: “We have a lot of young guys and a lot of people try to help them, but at the end of the day, everybody has to figure it out on their own.”
“It was a tough year,” Lewis recently said. “At the end really, it was the worst just because of the heartbreak of missing the playoffs. That’s the part that hits the most, knowing we had a really good chance and it fell right out of our hands. That’ll stick with me the longest. … You want to grind if you’re winning and playing for something. But as soon as those hopes and dreams are crushed, you want to let your body relax and chill and let your mind go and recover and recuperate. For me, it was huge. I definitely needed it and now I’m starting to work out again.”
(Top photo: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
