The Twins will have to be adaptable and inventive in the absence of Royce Lewis’s star power.
The Minnesota Twins were prevented from sweeping the Kansas City Royals in their second consecutive season opener at Kauffman Stadium by a lopsided loss on Sunday.
Additionally, their 2-1 start, while encouraging overall, is regrettably somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory.
Rising star Royce Lewis, a third baseman, hurt his right quadriceps severely while sprinting the bases in the third inning of Thursday’s opener.
Lewis homered in his first 2024 at-bat. It’s a devastating blow to the Twins lineup and to Lewis, who can’t seem to get a break following back-to-back season-ending ACL tears in 2021 and 2022, yet another exasperating injury setback.
The Twins will evaluate Lewis’s development and establish his complete recovery schedule following his at least one-month layoff.
The Twins should be ready to play most, if not all, of the first half without the 24-year-old slugger since missing two months would probably be seen as a good thing.
In order to replace Lewis on the roster, Austin Martin was called up from Triple-A St. Paul. He made his MLB debut on Saturday as a pinch runner and got the start in center field on Sunday.
Martin was a college standout at Vanderbilt and the No. 5 pick in the 2020 draft, but his stock has declined since then. He was acquired from the Toronto Blue Jays in mid-2021 as the star prospect in the José Berríos trade. Even though Martin’s potential has been limited at age 25 due to injuries and a lack of power development, he is still a talented prospect with the tools to secure a significant big-league job.
After missing most of the previous season’s first half due to an elbow injury, Martin struggled to get back into the Triple-A lineup. However, he ended up having a great season, hitting 300/.428/.473 with 14 steals in his final 44 games. A right-handed slasher with excellent contact abilities and a perceptive eye, he has amassed 64 steals and a.390 on-base percentage in 242 high-minors games.
To be clear, Lewis cannot be replaced. With 18 home runs in 71 career games for the Twins and an additional four in six postseason games, he has MVP-caliber production on a per-game basis, hitting.313/.369/.564. The only MLB hitters with an OPS higher than Lewis since his mid-2022 debut are superstars Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, and Mookie Betts.
The Twins’ most alluring and highest-upside fill-in option, top-100 prospect and spring standout Brooks Lee, began the season on the Triple-A disabled list due to lower back strain, which increases the difficulty level for the team. It would have been simple to bring up a healthy Lee to play third base, but he is anticipated to be sidelined for three to four weeks.
The Twins will have to mix and match to get as much output as they can out of the available choices in the interim, but Lee is expected to return far ahead of Lewis and may soon become a fill-in option after a brief spell at Triple-A. Although not even Earl Weaver could have created platoons that would have made Lewis disappear, the Twins do have some complementary pieces.
Martin has mediocre arm strength, so he definitely can’t play third base every day like Lee can, but he can still play left field, center field, and second base.Kyle Farmer can play shortstop and second base in addition to being a good glove at third base.Last season, Willi Castro started games for the Twins in six positions, but he was most effective in left field and third base.
When together, Martin, Farmer, and Castro offer almost infinite fielding flexibility, freeing up manager Rocco Baldelli to concentrate on how to maximize their offensive potential. Baldelli has multiple options every day because Farmer, Martin, and Castro are all right-handed hitters, and Castro is a switch hitter who has typically been more effective from the left side of the plate.
For instance, Baldelli might use Castro as the starting third baseman if he doesn’t want to interfere with the extremely effective second base platoon that consists of Farmer and Eduard Julien. Castro relocating primarily to third base would create openings for the quick Martin in pinch running and outfield covering responsibilities, particularly against left-handed pitchers.Martin replacing Farmer as Julien’s platoon mate at second base is an additional option. That would free up Farmer to play third base, where he could continue to face largely left-handers in a platoon with Castro or serve as the nearly daily starter. Castro could play left field (or designated hitter) against lefties in the latter case, in addition to playing third base against righties.
Farmer should be starting versus lefties someplace because since 2021 he has hit.285/.351/.493 off of them. But in the same time frame, he’s only hit.247/.303/.367 against righties, so the 33-year-old may be overexposed if he plays every day. Again, Castro’s career OPS was only.673 before his unexpected.750 OPS breakout last season, so the same might be said about him.
The Twins would prefer to just call up Lee and start him at third base every day, but that won’t be possible until at least May. While Martin has the potential to be a regular in the future and Farmer, Castro, and Martin can all play third base for a month, platooning allows players to exploit strengths and minimize weaknesses for maximum team productivity.
