KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Royce Lewis participated in a rigorous leg-based program this offseason designed to strengthen his tendons. It didn’t matter.
Saturday, the Minnesota Twins placed Lewis on the injured list with a “severe” right quadriceps strain that could sideline him for several months, according to team sources.
At a minimum, the Twins plan to rest the young star for a month before reassessing. Lewis suffered the injury running the bases in the third inning of Thursday’s season opener after homering in his first at-bat and singling in his second trip.
It’s the third major injury for Lewis since 2021 and means he’ll miss significant time for a fourth straight season after having his 2020 minor-league season wiped out by COVID-19. Despite the sobering news, Lewis remained unwavering in his positivity, noting the length and severity of the injury could be much worse.
“Maybe I’m too electric for my own good,” Lewis said, smiling. “I wouldn’t even call this long. The long ones I’ve dealt with were a year long. … It’s not the knee, so we know it’s not surgery. That’s important to me. Not going under the knife is very important. This is a win.”
That it’s not a season-ending injury can be seen as a positive to those with their glasses half-full. But it doesn’t change the fact the Twins are now without one of their building blocks only one game into the season.
Though Lewis has played only 77 games in his career, he is already a force at the plate. Including the postseason, Lewis has homered 26 times in 308 plate appearances, a Babe Ruth-type start.
The No. 1 pick of the 2017 MLB Draft has the type of talent that repeatedly lifted the Twins down the stretch in 2023 while Byron Buxton was on the injured list and Carlos Correa slumped through a season in which he played through plantar fasciitis. As good as they feel about their depth, the Twins know replacing Lewis won’t be easy.
“It’s really hard news,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “You feel terrible for Royce having to deal with this after everything else that he’s gone through. You feel bad for the team, as well. We got three innings out of him, and it was a pretty amazing contribution.”
When the Twins will next receive those contributions is to be determined. Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey didn’t offer an official timeline other than to say Lewis would initially rest for a month.
The team knew how severe Lewis’ strain was after he underwent an MRI on Friday. But the Twins took time to confer with club doctors as well as NFL doctors, who are more accustomed to seeing serious quadriceps injuries. As significant as the strain was, Falvey said surgery never was an option.
“He’s going to need some significant time down, from a recovery standpoint,” Falvey said. “He’s a unique healer. He seems to come back at times pretty quickly. He’s already feeling better than he felt (Friday), and that’s his nature. He’s very optimistic, and that’s the way we want to approach this. It’s really going to be the next few weeks to figure out how it’s recovering, how it’s returning. But it’s significant enough that he needs some time down in order to build back.”
“He has a severe quad strain … He is going to have some significant time down.”
Derek Falvey provided an update on Royce Lewis’ injury. @Audra_Martin | #MNTwins pic.twitter.com/CIATJKcH6i
— Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) March 30, 2024
What’s particularly frustrating for the Twins is the amount of work Lewis put into strengthening his legs in the offseason. The team devised a plan for Lewis, and he implemented it. As he went through spring training, Lewis said he felt “like a true athlete.”
“We talked about a lot of isometrics, which is tendon health,” he said. “I felt like we did a great job with running plyometrics, which is, like, jumping, single-leg hops, two-leg hops. … It’s kind of one of those…
This article was originally published by a theathletic.com . Read the Original article here. .