Royce Lewis Called Game as Twins Take 1–0 Series Lead

Royce Lewis returned from the injured list on Tuesday to start the Twins’ postseason run. He hadn’t played in a game since September 19 due to a hamstring strain, and it wasn’t completely clear if he would be activated for the series. It’s a decision not without risk. Rushing a player back from a hamstring strain can be suspect, and Lewis’ young career has been filled with health challenges. From a mechanical standpoint, hamstring strains can compromise how you interact with the ground and cause compensations up the kinetic chain.

Given how important every at-bat is in the playoffs, there’s very little room for error. But while Lewis still may not be able to get into a full sprint, that doesn’t matter so much if you’re trotting around the base paths. In his first two at-bats of his playoff career, he took Kevin Gausman yard for two no-doubt home runs, leading the Twins to a 3–1 victory over Toronto and their first postseason win since 2004.

As Jay Jaffe detailed in early September, Lewis has been a different hitter since mid-August. His 172 wRC+ from that point through end of the year ranked eighth among qualified hitters. Down the stretch, he was one of the very best hitters in the game; in Game 1, he showed it. Gausman was not as sharp as usual, but even so, he managed to keep Toronto close outside of the two home runs from Lewis. In four innings of work, he held the Twins to three runs, walking three.

In the first matchup between Lewis and Gausman, it was clear the Blue Jays right-hander didn’t have his best splitter command. In a 2–1 count, he got one of his four whiffs on the pitch on the day, but Lewis took an A swing while ahead in the count, knowing he could afford to do so. When Gausman tried to go get Lewis to chase an even lower splitter on the following pitch, it wasn’t nearly tempting enough. With a runner on first base after a leadoff single from Jorge Polanco, Gausman had to challenge the zone, delivering a 97.4-mph heater on the inner third of the plate. This is what Lewis did:

This was simply an incredible swing. Even on a well-located heater from one of the best pitchers in the game, Lewis was able to execute a tight turn and keep his hands inside the baseball. Watching hitters simultaneously adjust their body and barrel on inside pitches is extremely aesthetically pleasing; it’s one of the most impressive things a player can do on a baseball field, especially when the pitch is sizzling in at 97.

One thing about this swing that is so special is how Lewis uses his legs. A common misconception about hitting inside heaters is that you have to open up your hips and legs to get your rotation going in that direction. That’s true to a certain extent, but if you do it too much, you’ll send the ball into foul territory. To keep your bat angle at a point where you keep the ball fair, your front leg has to be your anchor. Lewis strides closed, creates space with a slight scissor kick to get his barrel into the hitting zone, then rotates into his front hip. If you’re a hitter like Isaac Paredes and have an extremely steep bat path, maybe you can open up and have your bat still on an angle to keep the ball fair. But when you have an extremely flat path like Lewis, whose average Vertical Bat Angle is around 25 degrees, you have no choice but to stay screwed into the ground and not let your front hip go. If you do everything correctly, then you can send a pitch like this 386 feet for a line drive home run.

To make this kind of swing once is impressive, but to match it in your next at-bat with an equally good one shows the kind of hitter Lewis is. I’d say that Gausman didn’t want the smoke the second time around, but he just didn’t have his typical splitter command; the pitch was consistently low enough that Twins hitters were able to lay off it all night. Lewis got two in a row in his third inning at-bat and held off with relative ease. Gausman threw in a cookie four-seamer at 93 mph, four ticks lower than the one he tossed two innings ago, to get the count to 3–1. Since Gausman didn’t have the splitter command, he went right back to the fastball, and Lewis made him pay:

Lewis has 17 career home runs; 15 of them were sprayed between center field and left field, and two were shot right down the line. Something he has yet to show is true opposite field power — I’m talking the 400-footers-to-right-center-kind of opposite field power, like this exact swing. Things had already clicked for Lewis before his hamstring injury, but now that he’s showing this ability? Yeah, this is a star in the making.

Lewis almost provided all the offense for the Twins with his two home runs, but his teammates came to play, too. While the lineup’s good at-bats didn’t result in more runs, Minnesota hitters were threatening all night with quality at-bats and several hard hit balls. On the other side of the ball, the defense showed out behind Pablo López’s solid 5.2 innings of one-run ball. Carlos Correa demonstrated his defensive awareness with this heads up play:

And Michael A. Taylor flashed the leather himself a few innings earlier:

Everything played out perfectly for the Twins, who handed the ball to their closer, Jhoan Duran, in the ninth with a two-run lead. He shut the door after filling up the zone with a ton of curveballs. It was a solid all-around game from a Twins team that has been playing excellent baseball of late. With Sonny Gray on the bump for Game 2 on Wednesday, they’re in a great position to take the series and secure their first playoff series victory since 2002.