FORT MYERS, FLA. – A promising season lost to hitting slumps and untimely injuries now nearly five months in the past, the full complement of Twins set out Monday to prepare for a shot at redemption in 2025.
Royce Lewis, for one, has some advice on how it can be accomplished:
Shut up.
“We’re going to stop talking about health stuff. I think that’s a bad juju, man,” the third-year third baseman said shortly after the team’s first full-squad workout of the spring. “I remember I said something about a slump [last September] — I was actually saying that you go through slumps, but I just don’t go through that thing mentally. Well, we’re not going to talk about any of that because the baseball gods hear you and things go the wrong way.”
Lewis suffered a quad injury on Opening Day last year that kept him sidelined for two months, and he suffered through the worst month of his career in September, batting only .181 as the Twins went 12-26 down the stretch, and la-la-la-la-la-la-he-doesn’t-want-to-hear-it, and certainly not revisit it.
“We’re just going to talk about what we’re going to do: Work hard. We’re going to keep working,” Lewis said. “To me, you just have to be a lion. Why is he the king of the jungle? He’s not the biggest. He’s not the fastest. He’s just the lion, and everyone knows he’s the guy.”
The Twins, their effervescently upbeat third baseman said, are lions, too.
“We just have to come in with that mentality, and realize it doesn’t matter if the Dodgers are the fastest team or the best team on paper, or whatever you want to say,” Lewis preached. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all about playing baseball in between the lines. Work your butts off, get some wins — that’s what we are going to do.”
