{"id":283102,"date":"2024-06-06T09:02:01","date_gmt":"2024-06-06T14:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=283102"},"modified":"2024-06-06T09:02:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T14:02:02","slug":"birthday-boy-lewis-makes-twins-home-run-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=283102","title":{"rendered":"Birthday Boy Lewis Makes Twins Home Run History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NEW YORK – The good thing for the Twins is that they\u2019re one game away from being done with the Yankees this regular season. An even better thing for the Twins is that they get to take this version of\u00a0Royce Lewis<\/a>\u00a0with them when they leave the Bronx for good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It just figures that Lewis would barely be back on the roster before he\u2019s already making history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lewis spent a leisurely 25th birthday morning on Wednesday walking around Central Park with his family before he showed up at Yankee Stadium and continued to inject energy into another mostly flat\u00a09-5 loss<\/a>\u00a0to the Yankees by becoming the first player in franchise history to homer in each of his first three games of a season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The feat had also been accomplished by the D-backs\u2019 Lourdes Gurriel Jr. earlier this season, from March 28-30 — and while Lewis\u2019 streak started on the same day, it has taken him two months and change to catch up due to the severe right quad strain that sidelined him after Opening Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wish I could be playing those missed 60 games or something,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cI wish I could have done it a long time ago. It would have meant more. Because it was split up, it doesn’t feel it. I’m just trying to prove I belong here and I’m going to earn a spot every day, still.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine other players to wear the Twins’ uniform had gone deep in each of his first two games of a campaign — from Harmon Killebrew in 1968 to Byron Buxton in 2021 — but only Lewis followed through with a third in the following game, when he mashed a Dennis Santana slider a Statcast-projected 373 feet to the left-field seats in the seventh inning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only thing that might have been more fitting would have been if Lewis\u2019 record-setting birthday homer had been a grand slam — which, for the record, he actually did do as a Minor Leaguer with then-Class A Cedar Rapids in 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a while, it looked like Lewis might actually be set up for another birthday slam, when the Twins had runners on second and third with one out in the sixth and Carlos Correa and Ryan Jeffers due up before Lewis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI said the same thing,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cI was looking at [quality control coach Nate Dammann] like, ‘You never know.’ Making jokes. Now, I can make jokes about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, Lewis never batted that inning and had to settle for leading off the next frame, when Carlos Rod\u00f3n was finally out of the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s because Lewis\u2019 accomplishment was muted, again, by the fact that the Twins remained without a baserunner against Rod\u00f3n into the sixth inning, when Carlos Santana broke up the perfect game bid with an opposite-field shot into the right-field bleachers off a 96.3 mph fastball well out of the zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had my approach middle-away,\u201d Santana said. \u201cEspecially [since] he was throwing a perfect game, he doesn\u2019t want me to get a hit. The first two pitches, he threw breaking balls. I said, \u2018OK, 100 percent, 1-1 count, he\u2019s throwing a fastball middle-away.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By that point, Chris Paddack had dug too deep of a hole for the Twins to avoid losing their first series since May 17-19, after which they won four consecutive series entering this three-game set against the Yankees. Minnesota dropped to 0-5 against New York this season with one matchup remaining, having been outscored in those games, 28-7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t really close to where we needed to be today,\u201d manager Rocco Baldelli said. \u201cFrom beginning to end, we have improvements to make when we\u2019re playing this team. We haven\u2019t played well against them this year. They\u2019ve played well. They\u2019ve outplayed us. … And it\u2019s five games now, and we need to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Lewis remained the team\u2019s sparkplug in his second game off the IL, he still saw the need to be part of that improvement. And he\u2019s about as far as he could be from enjoying his historic deeds, instead focusing on the continued experience he\u2019s gaining with more live reps as a developing Major Leaguer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though I turned 25 and I look 35, I’m still young,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cI’m just trying to learn and grow each and every day. Today was another good one for me with Rodon being an elite left-handed pitcher. For me to be able to learn from those at-bats, see those kind of pitches, was great.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK – The good thing for the Twins is that they\u2019re one game away from being done with the Yankees this regular season. An even better thing for the Twins is that they get to take this version of\u00a0Royce Lewis\u00a0with them when they leave the Bronx for good. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":274823,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283103,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283102\/revisions\/283103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/274823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}