What's Behind Twins Slugger Royce Lewis's Struggles at the Plate?

It’s no secret that Royce Lewis hasn’t looked like himself at the plate this season. Through May 28, Lewis is hitting just .138, with a ..415 OPS. His OPS+, which is adjusted for park, is sitting at a brutal 25, meaning that Lewis has been about 75% worse than an average hitter. After Wednesday's finale against the Rays, he told Bobby Nightingale of the Star Tribune: "I'm at a point where the hope is gone. I just do my job the best I can. If I keep hitting the ball hard, they say it's going to find a hole, but I haven't seen it yet."

Oof. That’s not great, for a player expected to be a cornerstone of the Twins lineup, and to hit in the middle of the order. Is this a case of Lewis doing the whole slump thing? Or perhaps he’s still rusty and finding his stroke, since he missed the last portion of spring training? Maybe he has just been unlucky. Or, it could be a combination of factors impacting his results. Let’s dig in and see what we find out.

Luck
Let’s start here, because this is absolutely part of the equation. You probably remember the homer that Jackson Chourio robbed to end the 13-game winning streak. Unlucky, for sure.

There have been a few other high-expected batting average plays that unfortunately found a fielder’s glove. In the past four games alone, Lewis has hit four different balls with an expected batting average of at least .500. All of them were outs.

Aside from the eye test, what do advanced metrics tell us about Lewis’s luck so far in 2025? Well, Lewis is whiffing less than last year. His 90th-percentile exit velocity is up almost two miles per hour, compared to 2024. He’s cut his strikeout rate from a solid 22.8% last year to a shiny 15.2% in 2025.

Through May 28, Lewis has seen 138 fastballs, and put 30 of them into play. The results are a middling .205 batting average and a .333 slugging percentage. His expected numbers, however, look a fair bit better. His expected batting average is .246. That’s a sizable difference. The difference between his actual and expected slugging percentage on heaters is even more pronounced: Ignoring defense, he should be slugging .457.

Sure, you might be thinking that almost all hitters should be able to tee off on fastballs. What if I told you that he’s been even less lucky on breaking balls? It’s true. On 16 batted-ball events in this category, Lewis has both hit and slugged .063. Putrid. His expected numbers, though? He "should" have a .228 batting average and .382 slugging. Not incredible, but just fine.

He’s gone hitless on five balls in play against offspeed stuff. Expected? .078 average and .092 slugging. That’s still brutal, but slightly less so, I suppose.

This tells us that with luck aside, Lewis has been better than his results would indicate. Overall, this paints the picture that were the dice to come up a bit differently, he would be an average-ish hitter this season. The thing is, though, Lewis shouldn't be an average hitter. When he's right, he is far better than that. So, what else is going on that's holding him back at the plate?

Approach at the Plate
As you can see, last year, Lewis did real damage low and middle-in, and he excelled at pulling the ball in the air. 

He covered the shadow of the zone pretty well, doing damage low as well as high and outside. He did this by optimizing his launch angle everywhere except the top third of the zone. 

This year, he’s making the type of contact where the best-case scenario to the pull side is a bloop hit. See his pulled hits? A couple have been bloops between shortstop and third, and a couple have been right over the third baseman’s head.

So why is this? It turns out he's skying the ball inside, and beating it into the ground when it's low and away.

For an example of typical results with this approach, Thursday’s game against the Rays ended with a ball in play thrown to this exact inner third. Lewis hit the ball hard (99.2 mph), but hit it at 46 degrees, and it landed harmlessly in Chandler Simpson’s glove.

Why? Here’s where things get a little interesting. Through May 28, Lewis has pulled just 7.8% of his balls in the air. That’s less than half the major-league average, and it’s no way to live for a power hitter. Now, Lewis is still elevating the ball with power, but the majority of this has been up the middle or oppo, where most of these fly balls are just long outs. Here's his contact heat map for 2025.

Now, compare this to last season, and you will see a completely different style of spray chart.

What has caused Lewis to become a different hitter? Likely, it can be attributed to his stance at the plate, his swing path, and timing.

Pull hitters tend to swing just a bit earlier and/or faster than guys who use all fields to maximize the amount of barrel that can make contact with the ball in a way that generates the most favorable outcomes for them. The simple fact that Lewis is not pulling much suggests that his timing is off. That's pretty straightforward.

Now, let’s look at his stance at the plate. Here’s 2024. His stance is pretty neutral: square, centered on the plate.

Next, let’s look at 2025.

As you can see, he’s widened his stance a bit, with his feet a couple inches farther apart than last year, and his back foot is farther behind the plate and tilted toward the catcher. As he meets the ball, his front foot extends a couple inches less past the plate than his aggregate swing from a year ago, and his back foot straightens and tilts very slightly toward the pitcher. Positioning back slightly will give him an extra split-second to recognize his pitch, but the wider stance is likely making it tougher for him to truly square up. Further complicating things is that, ideally, there’s some strong followthrough in the stride to help a hitter’s body weight drive the ball farther. In 2025, Lewis has a bit less of a stride than in 2024. 

Lewis's stance is just different, not in a good way, and the changes have resulted in him not only pulling the ball less, but also generally being less effective to all fields. For a hitter with more raw power (think Aaron Judge or Oneil Cruz), sacrificing some pull power in favor of using all fields more may work. For Lewis, with his good-but-not-elite power, the tradeoff doesn't seem worth it.

So, we have established that Lewis has gotten pretty unlucky through his limited action in 2025. This will regress positively as the season progresses. However, this regression will likely lead to Lewis being an average hitter, rather than a great one. To reclaim his true upside, he will need to adjust his stance, swing path, and overall approach at the plate. Lewis has shown himself capable of and willing to make real adjustments to his game throughout his career. The question is how long it will take for him to do so. If he can get his swing right sooner, rather than later, all of a sudden this lineup can look pretty formidable.