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By now, the Twins know they can't fully trust Royce Lewis's own accounts of the severity of his injuries, or of the indicators of healing he experiences as he tries to return therefrom. Thus, they listen to his input and opinion on his own health—but apply some external constraints on the rehab process, too.
"Anytime they let me do something, that’s always pretty good," said Lewis, who ran on the field for a second straight day Sunday. "They know, I think they said, like, I can tell them how I feel up to 60%, and after that, they know if I’m 80 percent, [I'll say] I’m ready to go. So they have to give me a governor per se, and so right now, the governor is we’re gonna take it easy and make sure we continue to progress."
Lewis said the plan is to rest one day, then try to run for three straight days, as he continues to ramp up his baseball activities.
"You know, it’s a long progression," he told reporters in the dugout at Target Field. "Running, it’s not just like ‘Run two days, and then you’re back.’ As much as I wish it was. Trust me, I would love to be playing right now. But that’s just not the case."
Lewis is grateful to be around the team during this part of the rehab process, though he won't travel with them to Kansas City for the four-game series beginning Monday. Instead, he'll continue his work in Minnesota, with the goal being to progress to baserunning and changing direction by the following week.
Swelling lingers in the area where he suffered a strained hamstring on March 16th, but Lewis downplayed that as a point of concern.
"I talk to someone like Randy Dobnak; he deals with swelling still on that ankle that he had," Lewis said. "Everyone is different, every body’s different and every injury’s different, but especially when you’re doing high-volume stuff, that swelling will come back. So it’s more about what can you tolerate, and was it down enough? And for sure, we had it down enough, and we started right around Opening Day, actually."
While Lewis reports no pain in the area of the injury since the day after he suffered it (when he wasn't even able to straighten his leg), the continued swelling could be one reason why the Twins are keeping that governor on his recovery. Another, of course, is his track record of getting hurt—and then, after returning, getting hurt again. Lewis hears the rumblings from those outside the team who would prefer to see him make changes to his playing style or his preparation, but (while he understands them in a constructive way) isn't willing to stop playing the whole game, the way he believes he's capable of playing it.
"I’ve only made it here because of who I am. I’m not gonna change who I am," he said. "If I start changing who I am, then I think as a player, I’ll start diminishing my value. And what I do is very special. I think everyone’s able to see that, and I think that’s why everyone is so mad that I keep getting hurt."
You can, however, hear the frustration taking a toll on the relentlessly positive Lewis. The online chatter finds its way to him, and he sounded a pained tone by comparing his highly kinetic, athletic game to those of players who might be more durable but lack the same potential for multidimensional impact.
"You see guys get hurt more that tend to be more athletic and explosive, because they put themselves in those positions, because they can do things that a lot of people, frankly, can’t do," he said. "And unfortunately, I’ve joked about it, maybe I should just play more like Kyle Schwarber and be smart about it. But at the same time, if I start doing that, I’ll diminish my value. And I want to play the game and help the team win, and not worry about being hurt."
Lewis also had sharp words for those who criticize his injury problems anonymously and online.
"That’s just the world that we live in, man. People behind a screen, whether they’re in a basement, or I don’t know where they’re at, but then they’re on Twitter and they think they’re safe, but say something to someone’s face and see what happens."
Those sentiments are unsurprising, from an extraordinarily talented player and a proud professional. As he pointed out, fans don't see the hard work he puts into conditioning and treatment off the field, and they tend to make unduly ungenerous assumptions about those things. As most big-leaguers do, Lewis works hard to reduce his risk of injury by keeping himself in great shape and preparing his body for the grind of each game, as well as the long season—sometimes, two different and competing objectives.
At the same time, some of those fans might fairly observe that Schwarber has found ample ways to contribute to winning teams since changing his own style of play. When he came up as a part-time catcher and outfielder, he took the latter duties so seriously that he wrecked his knee in a collision with a teammate early in 2016. Since then (and especially since 2021), he's taken a much more cautious approach to all facets of his game, but has been a consistently superb producer at the plate.
Lewis, whose pride and dedication to the whole game includes a fierce belief in his own value as a defender and baserunner, has rated out as a merely average fielder and a below-average baserunner over the parts of three seasons he's played. Schwarber has been worse in both categories, but the increased volume (and a more consistent level of offensive production) has made him more valuable over the last three-plus seasons than Lewis has been, by almost any measurement.
"It’s hard to tell guys how to play Major League Baseball once they take the field—how to tell a guy to give a certain amount of effort, that never feels productive," said Rocco Baldelli, Thursday, with regard to players like Lewis and Byron Buxton. "Even if the message seems to be correct, it never feels good or productive to have to do that, or want to do that. The right message is almost always to go play. And they can regulate themselves better than a manager can ever tell a guy to do."
That makes Baldelli a good fit with his pupil, in Lewis. The one doesn't want to tone down his players' effort. The other wouldn't hear of doing so, anyway. As Lewis acknowledged, though, the organization is putting some safeguards in place for him, at least during the rehabilitative process. Once he takes the field again, he'll seek maximal impact. That's the best thing for all parties—as long as he can find a way to play the full-out version of the game without continuing to get hurt at such a high rate.
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