Lewis feels 'loose,' optimistic latest injury won't be as severe

MINNEAPOLIS -- Royce Lewis didn’t speak with the media on Wednesday after he was placed on the 10-day IL with a right adductor strain. It’s not that he was too upset to talk. He had a better reason.

He was looking out for his newest teammate, Brooks Lee, who was making his Major League debut.

“It was Brooks’ day,” Lewis said on Thursday. “You only get one big league debut. I didn’t want to take anything away from that.”

It would be understandable if Lewis wasn’t feeling particularly chatty in the wake of his latest trip to the injured list. But a day later, he was his usual chatty, glass-half-full self.

“It feels great, but again, I’ve always felt great shortly after [injuries],” Lewis said. “Today, it felt very loose, like I can go play DH. But you know, you’ve got to be available for the field. So obviously, we’ve got to be smart about what the next steps are. But it’s definitely not as severe at all as anything I’ve had in the past.”

Of course, torn ACLs have already cost him two full seasons, while a string of soft-tissue injuries (oblique, hamstring and quad) have hampered him the last 12 months. This time, the adductor muscle -- part of the structure that constitutes what most of us refer to generally as the groin -- might have been compromised by the quad injury that kept Lewis sidelined in April and May.

“What I was told, it’s a lot of compensation for the lack of strength I have in my quad because of that injury, still,” Lewis said. “Not that we rushed that back. It’s just that that takes eight months of time, and if someone is ready -- I mean, clearly I was able to perform at a high level. So we didn’t want to wait…You have to be 100 percent.

“It was more about what was the safest route and not re-injury,” he added. “Which we definitely accomplished. I don’t feel any pain there at all. But because there is a deficit there, the adductor kind of overcompensated.”

Lewis said he began feeling a tightness in that area during the Twins’ series at Oakland from June 21-23. And when he tried to run out a double on Tuesday, the pain intensified to the point he didn’t think it was safe to continue.

He admitted it’s been tough to figure out what he might change in his training and preparation to help prevent this in the future.

“I don't think we did anything wrong. I think we did everything right,” Lewis said. “I guess I'm just going to have to be here eight or nine hours before the game. Whatever it takes, I'll do it. I'm sure people are going to blurt out 'He's not eating right. He's not doing this.' I've made significant changes. I've spent a lot of money on my body. I've been doing everything I possibly can. If I could think of something I'd do it.”

He added -- with a laugh -- that he’d even consider this drastic step:

“If someone said, 'Hey, if you smoke cigarettes like Babe Ruth,’ and that'll work, then I'll do that too. I'll do whatever. I'm open to anything.”

In the end, Lewis flashed his usual optimism as he looked toward the immediate future.

“I think it's just more of a really good break,” he said of his current status. “Good time for that with the All-Star [break] coming up. We'll see what happens after. I'm not going to give a timetable, but I'm very excited about the opportunity to come back soon.”