While You're Here, Royce..

 

The good news is that through 86 games, Royce Lewis is hitting .318 with 27 home runs and 71 RBIs. The bad news is it's over three seasons.

When I talk about 'magic hat' players, the kind of players that are forces of positive energy for teams until they get injured and the magic leaves, I usually refer to somebody like Mike Trout, or Paul Blackburn, or Tommy Pham this year. Royce Lewis is the rare magic hat player that's never not been incredible in the majors, and just can't sustain the success because he keeps getting injured. Lewis has 10 homers in 16 games, and it makes you wish that he was healthy more often, because if you do the proportion work, if he'd have been there for the same amount of games as Carlos Santana, 70, he'd have hit FORTY-FOUR HOME RUNS BY NOW.

Royce Lewis, at the very least, has been an incredible hitter whenever he's been healthy. You could tell how much energy struck this Twins team the second he came back, and he's been one of the biggest stars of the team's recent come-up. And look, a lot of people on this team clicked in the last month. Carlos Santana, Jose Miranda, Byron Buxton, hell LOOK AT CORREA GO ALL OF THE SUDDEN. This team took a while to take off, and they're all pretty much here now. And having Lewis hitting a million homers and be a guaranteed guy on for this stretch of June really helps. There is the worry, though, that now that he's up he's gonna pick an inopportune moment to get hurt again. This is what he and Byron Buxton have in common: they excel when they're there, they conk out at the least helpful moment. Buxton takes it to the next level, cause he'll come back and not be 100%, and so he'll do away with all the progress he'd accumulated. 

Yeah, you're really seeing the Twins come to life all of the sudden, and all of these pieces that may not have even been working during the streak start doing impressive things. Yesterday Bailey Ober had a complete game start with a low pitch count, that turned a lot of heads. Simeon Woods Richardson's been fantastic as a full-on starter this year, he's got a 3.26 ERA in 12 starts. Jorge Alcala and Cole Sands are having awesome seasons in the pen, and Josh Staumont has been unhittable since coming away from Kansas City. Joe Ryan's truly feeling like an ace again.

This team is not only well over .500, but they just lapped the Royals! The Twins are back in second, and have caught up to one of the hottest under-the-radar teams in the league! They've caught this much momentum and are slowly coming back up to the Guardians. The AL Central is finally fully competitive again, and it's not just 'one team that's great and four sluggish ones'. Y'see what a healthy Royce Lewis can do to this division?

Coming Tomorrow- One of my all-time favorites, who's still looking like his old self in the city he came up in.