Royce Lewis to make MLB debut after Carlos Correa injury
A broken finger on Carlos Correa's throwing hand has paved the way for Royce Lewis to make his MLB debut with the Minnesota Twins.
Lewis is being called up ahead of Minnesota's series opener agains the Athletics Friday night at Target Field. The Twins haven't confirmed the call-up, but multiple reports – including one on the Twins' official website – have reported the news.
Drafted No. 1 overall in 2017, Lewis is Minnesota's No. 1 prospect and is batting .310/.430/.563 with 3 homers, 10 doubles, 1 triple, 17 walks and 8 stolen bases in 24 games at Triple-A St. Paul this season.
Lewis is rated by MLB Pipeline as the No. 44 prospect in all of baseball, having ranked as high as No. 1 before injuries and the pandemic plagued him in 2020 and 2021.
The 22-year-old hadn't appeared in a game from Sept. 2, 2019 until the start of this season. COVID-19 wiped out the minor league season in 2020 and he suffered a torn ACL before the start of the 2021 season.
Taking all of that into account, Lewis will have played a grand total of 57 games between Double-A and Triple-A over the span of nearly 1,000 days (977 to be exact) before making his big league debut.
It's been nearly four years sine Lewis was compared to Derek Jeter. That was back in 2018 after an MLB scout watched Lewis at Class A, according to The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal.
"One scout who saw Lewis recently at Class A offered him the highest of praise, calling him 'Derek Jeter incarnate.' The scout said Lewis needs to learn that internal clock all the great ones have, but once that happens, the scout believes Lewis stands the chance of becoming elite."
Jeter was selected sixth overall by the Yankees in 1992. He made his MLB debut three years later and went on to collect 3,465 hits en route to 14 All-Star appearances in 20 seasons.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.