Royce Lewis has been ruled out for the Minnesota Twins’ season opener March 27 against the St. Louis Cardinals.
The 25-year-old third baseman left Sunday’s exhibition game against the Red Sox with a hamstring injury, and the Twins announced Monday that Lewis suffered a “moderate left hamstring strain.”
A specific timetable for his return has not been revealed, but Lewis told the Star Tribune that his latest setback “not even close” to as serious as the quad strain he suffered on Opening Day last season. That injury kept him out for two months.
With Lewis out, there’s a good chance that Brooks Lee will get the start at third base when the Twins open the season March 27 in St. Louis against former Twins ace Sonny Gray.
“It’s emotional and, of course, disappointing,” said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said Sunday, reacting to Lewis’ injury. “There is no way around that fact. In this game, you have to be able to deal with adversity. You have to be able to deal with challenges. Not everyone deals with the same difficulties. Royce knows that. It’s hard sometimes getting over the initial part of the deal, the injury and the immediate aftermath and having to talk about it.
“Once you get through that part of it, then you get your eyes toward getting back on the field. We still have a lot to learn. Let’s play it slow, wait and see, get some imaging done as we always do in these situations and see where we’re sitting at that point. We’ll know more in a few days. We’ll know a lot by actually how he’s moving around and what he’s capable of doing in the coming weeks.”
Lewis missed two months with the quad strain last season, and then played for a month before a groin strain sidelined him for about three weeks. He returned to play the rest of the season from late July through the end of September.
He’s also dealt with an oblique injury in 2023 and he endured two ACL surgeries after being drafted first overall by the Twins in 2017.
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