A broken finger on Carlos Correa’s throwing hand has paved the way for Royce Lewis to make his MLB debut with the Minnesota Twins.
Lewis is being called up ahead of Minnesota’s series opener agains the Athletics Friday night at Target Field. The Twins haven’t confirmed the call-up, but multiple reports – including one on the Twins’ official website – have reported the news.
Drafted No. 1 overall in 2017, Lewis is Minnesota’s No. 1 prospect and is batting .310/.430/.563 with 3 homers, 10 doubles, 1 triple, 17 walks and 8 stolen bases in 24 games at Triple-A St. Paul this season.
Lewis is rated by MLB Pipeline as the No. 44 prospect in all of baseball, having ranked as high as No. 1 before injuries and the pandemic plagued him in 2020 and 2021.
The 22-year-old hadn’t appeared in a game from Sept. 2, 2019 until the start of this season. COVID-19 wiped out the minor league season in 2020 and he suffered a torn ACL before the start of the 2021 season.
Taking all of that into account, Lewis will have played a grand total of 57 games between Double-A and Triple-A over the span of nearly 1,000 days (977 to be exact) before making his big league debut.
It’s been nearly four years sine Lewis was compared to Derek Jeter. That was back in 2018 after an MLB scout watched Lewis at Class A, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal.
“One scout who saw Lewis recently at Class A offered him the highest of praise, calling him ‘Derek Jeter incarnate.’ The scout said Lewis needs to learn that internal clock all the great ones have, but once that happens, the scout believes Lewis stands the chance of becoming elite.”
Jeter was selected sixth overall by the Yankees in 1992. He made his MLB debut three years later and went on to collect 3,465 hits en route to 14 All-Star appearances in 20 seasons.
