Birthday boy Lewis makes Twins home run history

NEW YORK -- The good thing for the Twins is that they’re one game away from being done with the Yankees this regular season. An even better thing for the Twins is that they get to take this version of Royce Lewis with them when they leave the Bronx for good.

It just figures that Lewis would barely be back on the roster before he’s already making history.

Lewis spent a leisurely 25th birthday morning on Wednesday walking around Central Park with his family before he showed up at Yankee Stadium and continued to inject energy into another mostly flat 9-5 loss to the Yankees by becoming the first player in franchise history to homer in each of his first three games of a season.

The feat had also been accomplished by the D-backs’ Lourdes Gurriel Jr. earlier this season, from March 28-30 -- and while Lewis’ streak started on the same day, it has taken him two months and change to catch up due to the severe right quad strain that sidelined him after Opening Day.

“I wish I could be playing those missed 60 games or something,” Lewis said. “I wish I could have done it a long time ago. It would have meant more. Because it was split up, it doesn't feel it. I'm just trying to prove I belong here and I'm going to earn a spot every day, still.”

Nine other players to wear the Twins' uniform had gone deep in each of his first two games of a campaign -- from Harmon Killebrew in 1968 to Byron Buxton in 2021 -- but only Lewis followed through with a third in the following game, when he mashed a Dennis Santana slider a Statcast-projected 373 feet to the left-field seats in the seventh inning.

The only thing that might have been more fitting would have been if Lewis’ record-setting birthday homer had been a grand slam -- which, for the record, he actually did do as a Minor Leaguer with then-Class A Cedar Rapids in 2018.

For a while, it looked like Lewis might actually be set up for another birthday slam, when the Twins had runners on second and third with one out in the sixth and Carlos Correa and Ryan Jeffers due up before Lewis.

“I said the same thing,” Lewis said. “I was looking at [quality control coach Nate Dammann] like, 'You never know.' Making jokes. Now, I can make jokes about it.”

Instead, Lewis never batted that inning and had to settle for leading off the next frame, when Carlos Rodón was finally out of the game.

That’s because Lewis’ accomplishment was muted, again, by the fact that the Twins remained without a baserunner against Rodón into the sixth inning, when Carlos Santana broke up the perfect game bid with an opposite-field shot into the right-field bleachers off a 96.3 mph fastball well out of the zone.

“I had my approach middle-away,” Santana said. “Especially [since] he was throwing a perfect game, he doesn’t want me to get a hit. The first two pitches, he threw breaking balls. I said, ‘OK, 100 percent, 1-1 count, he’s throwing a fastball middle-away.’”

By that point, Chris Paddack had dug too deep of a hole for the Twins to avoid losing their first series since May 17-19, after which they won four consecutive series entering this three-game set against the Yankees. Minnesota dropped to 0-5 against New York this season with one matchup remaining, having been outscored in those games, 28-7.

“We weren’t really close to where we needed to be today,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “From beginning to end, we have improvements to make when we’re playing this team. We haven’t played well against them this year. They’ve played well. They’ve outplayed us. ... And it’s five games now, and we need to do better.”

Though Lewis remained the team’s sparkplug in his second game off the IL, he still saw the need to be part of that improvement. And he’s about as far as he could be from enjoying his historic deeds, instead focusing on the continued experience he’s gaining with more live reps as a developing Major Leaguer.

“Even though I turned 25 and I look 35, I'm still young,” Lewis said. “I'm just trying to learn and grow each and every day. Today was another good one for me with Rodon being an elite left-handed pitcher. For me to be able to learn from those at-bats, see those kind of pitches, was great.”