Minnesota Twins’ Royce Lewis going back on injured list because of hamstring injury

HOUSTON – Royce Lewis has identified the culprit in the rash of injuries that have sent him to the injured list eight times in his four-year major league career.

It’s baseball.

“I’m tired of being the one who’s being bullied and picked on by this game. Whether it wants me to suffer on the offensive side, or when I’m going hot, it just wants to kick me out with an injury,” Lewis said Saturday after the Twins decided to place their third baseman on the 10-day injured list. “Seems like it’s picking on me at this moment, so I’m waiting for one of my friends to pick me up and stop this bully.”

Lewis re-injured his left hamstring Friday night, an injury that has already cost him six weeks of this season. After enduring a horrendous slump upon his return last month, he was batting .367 in June, making the timing particularly frustrating.

But at least the recurrence is not as serious as the original injury back in March, he said, so his time away will be much shorter.

“I was ready to pinch-hit today — that’s where I’m at. And I feel like they can’t trust me at that point, so they’re just trying to protect me,” said Lewis, 26. “But it’s just a good sign that I was ready to go up and hit.”

Lewis was examined on Saturday but still didn’t feel quite right, manager Rocco Baldelli said. The Twins sent him to a nearby hospital to undergo a magnetic resonance imaging exam, which revealed mild inflammation of the hamstring. Given his injury history, the Twins chose to give him 10 days to recover.

“It’s definitely disappointing but these are things that we deal with,” Baldelli said. “We’ve got to deal with them and not only that, move forward, challenge guys. Royce will be fine. Royce will be OK.”

It’s a little annoying, Lewis said, that he got hurt again despite not running as hard as he possibly could. “I was trying to be a little bit smarter running the bases. You know, these ground balls, 99 percent of the time you’re out, and if someone bobbles it, you’ve just got to run fast enough to be safe on those. So that’s what I’ve been doing.”

Lewis will return to Minnesota to begin workouts again at Target Field while the team is in Cincinnati.

In his place, the Twins are expected to recall outfielder DaShawn Keirsey Jr. from Class AAA St. Paul. Keirsey batted .109 in 45 games earlier this season, but his baserunning and outfield defense are considered an asset.

Byron Buxton was hit on the left elbow in the sixth inning Saturday by a 94-mph sinker from Astros starter Hunter Brown, but after icing it down after the game, believes he will be ready to play on Sunday.

“I mean, I got hit. I can tell,” Buxton said. “ I don’t feel too good but I’ll be all right.”

Baldelli and head athletic trainer Nick Paparesta spent several minutes making sure Buxton could stay in the game. The center fielder was determined to, and even stole second base — his 12th swipe of the season without being caught — as soon as the game resumed.

But jarring the elbow by sliding into the bag gave him second thoughts about remaining in the game.

“I knew if I went to the dugout [once the inning ended], they probably weren’t going to let me come back out, so I chose not to go back to the dugout,” Buxton said. “But when I went back out to the outfield, it just wasn’t [right]. I didn’t want to put us in a bad position so I made a smart decision,” and jogged back in.

Finally, Danny Coulombe could acknowledge his scoreless streak. Unfortunately, it was because it’s over.

The lefthander walked a batter and gave up a pair of singles Friday night as the Astros added one last run to their 10-3 victory. But that meaningless run was quite meaningful to Coulombe, who had not given up one yet this year, or for the past 12 months, a total of 27⅓ innings.

“It’s been a pretty special run. I didn’t even know about it until probably a month ago,” said Coulombe, who last gave up a run on May 26, 2024, shortly before he went on the injured list for three months. “Somebody was like, ‘Hey, you know the streak you’re on …’ I had no idea.”

Superstition prevented him from discussing, or reporters from asking about, the innings as they piled up. But people were noticing. Quietly.

“Yeah, I realized he still had the zero up there,” Baldelli said with a laugh. “Pretty amazing and it was not just a great streak of innings — he was pitching really important spots. We would call him in and he did a really great job. You look at his ERA and it’s sparkly. But he did a great job [preventing] some other people’s runs, too.”

So it’s a shame it had to end in such an innocuous way, right?

“Not at all,” Coulombe said. “It’s better than me giving up the go-ahead run.”

Darren McCaughan gave up four runs on seven hits and a walk in five innings as St. Paul lost for the sixth time in seven games, 4-2 at Indianapolis. Mickey Gasper had two of the Saints’ five hits.