It may be time to start thinking differently about Rolls Royce
I can pinpoint the moment my mindset changed about Royce Lewis as a Minnesota Twins player. While I was at Daikin Park suffering through another dispiriting loss—there’s a long line of those—to the Houston Astros, Lewis hit a single in the 9th inning and ran to first base. Nothing seemed amiss—until Rocco Baldelli and the trainer popped out of the dugout. It culminated in an all-too-familiar sight: Royce gingerly retiring to the clubhouse. The verdict: A mild strain of his left hamstring. Prognosis for return: Who knows (though apparently a rehab stint with the Saints is imminent).
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For a couple of seasons, Twins fans have operated on the philosophy that somehow, some way, Royce will find a way to elevate the ball club to success.
It’s not necessarily a flight of fancy. When healthy and locked in, Lewis is absolutely electric. He has raised his game on the big stage in ways no Twin has done since #34.
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Such a thought process is also already ingrained in Twins fans due to its similar application towards Byron Buxton. The narrative around Buck has always been “the Twins are a completely different team with vs. without him”—and the numbers bear that out.
Thanks to StatMuse, we can see that MN is 449-385 (.538 WP) in games with Byron since his debut & 350-413 (.459 WP) without Buxton in that same span. Further math shows that #25 has played in 52% of the contests available to him from debut to present.
Obviously, not every win was caused by the Georgia speedster and not every loss was his cross to bear. But the gap in those winning percentages—essentially “solid playoff caliber squad” with him and “74-win unit” without him—seems wide enough and over a large enough sample size to be significant.
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As such, I see why it is so easy to copy-and-paste the same heuristic upon Rolls Royce.
But it doesn’t work.
In games with Lewis in the lineup since his debut, the Twins are 95-87 (.522 WP). Not as robust as the Buxton numbers, but solid nonetheless.
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Sadly, StatMuse does not supply games-without-Royce W/L data. If someone—(cough JohnFoley cough)—finds those numbers, drop them in the comments.
But that lack of data doesn’t torpedo the analysis. Why? Because Lewis has only played in 182 total games in parts of four seasons with the Twins. Almost too small of a sample size to draw conclusions from. At least Buxton—for all his woes—has 826 games banked.
What I do know is that out of a possible 538 games with MN, Lewis has played in 182 of them—or 34%. If you figure a team plays six games a week on average, Lewis appears in two of them. Compared to that figure, Buxton gets an attendance award.
Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images
Don’t get me wrong—I want Royce Lewis to be Harmon Killebrew & Kirby Puckett wrapped up in one package as desperately as the next Twins fan. I also am not blaming him for the injuries—he already seems pretty low about the whole ordeal.
But I think the era of pining for Royce’s return to “save the team” needs to be put on hold. Buxton has generally proven the theory out—but Lewis simply hasn’t had enough time to rack up an impact sample size.