According to The Athletic’s Dan Hayes, the Minnesota Twins optioned third baseman Royce Lewis to Triple-A St. Paul on Tuesday morning. The move was something that Twins fans saw coming as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2017 draft was hitting just .163/261/.279 with three home runs, 13 RBI and 37 strikeouts in 104 at-bats this season and the hope is that Lewis will use his time in the minors to get back on track.
If Lewis figures it out, it would be a great thing for the Twins. But they need to figure out why players are struggling after they initially have success at the major league level and why situations like the one Lewis is experiencing keeps happening.
Royce Lewis is the latest Twins prospect to regress in the majors
Lewis looked like a cornerstone for the Twins back in 2023 when he was hitting grand slams and becoming a postseason hero. After tearing his ACL in back-to-back seasons, Lewis broke out during the 2023 campaign, hitting .309/.372/.548 with 15 homers and 52 RBI in 217 at-bats (58 games). He also slugged a pair of homers in his postseason debut that October, helping the Twins defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 3-1 and snap the franchise’s 18-game postseason losing streak.
That power was still present during the 2024 season when Lewis hit 16 homers in 292 at-bats. But teams slowly started to learn how to pitch to him as his batter’s line dropped to .233/.295/.452. The situation has escalated from there as Lewis has hit .225/.285/.398 with 32 homers and 112 RBI over 772 at-bats (219 games) over the past three seasons.
Lewis has been his own worst enemy at times, butting heads with the former coaching staff led by Rocco Baldelli, using three different swings and even suggesting that Twins management has been rooting for him to fail. But even if telling the world he “doesn’t do slumps” was a bad idea, so is whatever the Twins have been teaching their young players in the minors.
The Twins’ development problems may have begun with Miguel Sanó. After hitting .245/.338/.498 with 118 homers and 315 RBI with an All-Star appearance (2017) over his first five seasons, Sano’s career went into free fall, hitting .207/.295/.441 with 44 homers and 103 RBI over his final three seasons before being released in 2022.
Sanó’s weight struggles and lack of patience at the plate were cited as reasons for that decline, but the examples have become more glaring in recent years.
Jose Miranda was a former top 100 prospect that was off to a fine start in his career, hitting .268/.325/.426 with 15 homers and 66 RBI in his rookie season in 2022 and .284/.322/.441 with nine homers and 49 RBI during the 2024 season. But he went just 6-for-26 with a homer, five RBI and 13 strikeouts in 36 at-bats before being demoted for a baserunning gaffe in 2025 and was never seen in a Twins uniform again before signing a minor league deal with the San Diego Padres last winter.
Edouard Julien is a similar example after hitting .263/.381/.459 with 16 homers and 37 RBI in 109 games during the 2023 season. But he hit just .211/.303/.322 with 13 homers and 45 RBI in 199 games over the next three seasons before being traded to the Colorado Rockies last offseason.
Looking at the current roster, there are even more examples.
Matt Wallner had a .251/.366/.500 batter’s line with 29 homers and 88 RBI in his first three seasons with the Twins, but hit just .193/298/.419 with 26 homers and 50 RBI in 138 games before being demoted last week.
Luke Keaschall had MLB Network Matt Vasgersian mentioning him as a potential American League MVP darkhorse going into this year after hitting .302/.382/.445 with four homers, 28 RBI and 14 steals in 49 games last season. But his sophomore year has been more difficult, hitting .232/.314/.310 with a homer, 17 RBI and 10 stolen bases in 46 games.
Mix all of this in with Lewis’s struggles and it’s enough to make you wonder what is happening and how the Twins can change it. Replacing Baldelli with Derek Shelton seems like a good idea, but Shelton was part of a previous Minnesota regime under Paul Molitor and served as Baldelli’s bench coach in 2019, which begs the question if anything really changed.
With Walker Jenkins, Kaelen Culpepper and Emmanuel Rodriguez headling a new wave of prospects, the Twins need to figure it out. Otherwise, more players could travel the same path as Lewis as he makes his way to St. Paul.
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