After a disappointing 82-80 season last year, ending with a fourth-place finish in the American League Central, the Minnesota Twins enter this season with high expectations, thanks to the development of their young players and a bullpen described by some MLB experts as the best in baseball. In fact, the PECOTA projection system sees the Twins winning the AL Central pennant.
But one of the young players Twins manager Rocco Baldelli is counting on to have a breakout year, and make that pennant possible, was forced to leave Sunday’s spring training game with what was reported as a hamstring strain.
In 2017, the Twins made Royce Lewis the No. 1 overall pick in the draft. Just 18 years old at the time, Lewis received a bonus of $6.725 million from Minnesota for signing directly out of JSerra Catholic High School in Orange County, California. Twins scouts were so excited about Lewis, that one — 30-year scouting veteran John Leavitt — said of the Scott Boras client, “I believe he’s going to be a Hall of Famer, and I’ve been saying that forever.”
So far, however, Lewis — who made his MLB debut with the Twins in 2022 — has not lived up to the hype, and injuries have played a huge role in holding him back. He underwent surgery on his ACL knee ligament as a minor leaguer, and then again as an MLB rookie.
The surgery kept him out until May 2023, but after returning he was soon out again with strains to his left oblique and hamstring muscles. The injury barrage did not let up last year, when Lewis was limited to 81 games by a right adductor strain and another to his right quad.
On Sunday Lewis, who said earlier this spring that his goal was simply to play as many games as possible, went down again. On a ground ball to the left side in the bottom of the second inning, in a game against the Boston Red Sox at the Twins’ home facility of Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers, Florida, Lewis pulled up lame on his way to first base, limping the rest of the way to the bag.
Royce Lewis (leg) leaves game Sunday.pic.twitter.com/oIynVGEDIB
— Underdog MLB (@Underdog__MLB) March 16, 2025
He then exited the game. The Twins later announced Lewis had injured a hamstring muscle.
While the team did not reveal the severity of the hamstring injury to Lewis, according to a 2019 study, the average time missed for the lowest-grade hamstring injury suffered by an MLB player is 14.5 days. March 27, opening day, is now 13 days away. But if the hamstring injury is a higher-grade strain, Lewis could miss “significantly more days,” the study said, making his availability to start the season doubtful.
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