'When he's back, it's electric': Lewis leads Twins in home return

MINNEAPOLIS -- There’s no place like home for Royce Lewis, it seems.

Playing his first game at home in a month due to the time he missed with an adductor strain, Lewis wasted no time in making himself right at home, exploding for four RBIs in the first three innings to key the Twins’ offense in a 10-2 win in Friday’s series opener at Target Field.

“Frankly, his energy, everything he does that he brings to the table -- and I say this about [Byron Buxton] sometimes -- it’s directed at his team and his teammates, and getting everyone going,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “And people do, they get going, because, man, he can do a lot.”

As is Lewis’ custom in announcing his arrival following an absence, the 25-year-old went deep to start his day, capping a six-pitch plate appearance by driving a slider from White Sox right-hander Davis Martin a projected 409 feet to the bleachers in left field to give Minnesota an early 2-0 advantage.

Just after the White Sox tied the game with a two-run blast off Joe Ryan in the top of the third, Lewis cracked a two-run double to the gap in right-center in the bottom of the frame, getting halfway to the cycle and up to four RBIs by the third inning.

Each of those hits -- whether it goes over the wall or not -- seems to be accompanied by a dizzying (and ever-growing) array of energetic celebrations aimed at various teammates that pump them all up, and he seemed to be in particularly rare form on Friday.

“I think it’s a little bit harder on the road,” Lewis said. “You just feel like sometimes you don’t want to show up too much, because maybe you’ll get hit by a pitch or booed or something. It was good to be back home.”

Clearly. After his first-inning blast, he did his customary array of celebrations as he rounded the bases, then seemed particularly amped up as he did some yelling, screaming, hooting, hollering and hugging around the dugout -- then danced for the dugout TV camera, for good measure.

After his two-run double, he turned to his dugout, put one hand on his helmet and motioned with his right hand like he was driving a car, before punching the air.

“I’ll point to all my teammates, the whole bench,” Lewis said. “And then I do a little Rolls Royce for them.”

Lewis has hit well just about anywhere in his career -- that much is a given, considering he entered the game with a .299 average and .937 OPS lifetime -- but he has done most of his damage this season in front of his home fans, hitting .405 with a 1.401 OPS and seven homers in Minneapolis.

“It’s just good to be back home, just laying in your bed,” Lewis said. “Little things. Like in New York, I got a little kink in my neck. People don’t know these things. But it’s just part of it. You travel. Get a little sickness, whatever it may be, still got to put up points and score.”

His teammates need to be ready for his home energy as soon as they walk into the Target Field clubhouse hours before a game, too -- because this is just who Lewis is, whether he’s in the clubhouse lounging with his teammates or on the bases after a big knock to put the team ahead.

Five or six hours before a game starts, the moment your foot crosses the threshold? Here comes Royce.

“He's ready, and you'd better be ready, too,” Buxton said. “If you're going to come in here in a bad mood, he's going to put you in a good mood. It's one of those things where you can't walk around here in a bad mood. He has too much positive energy, so it's not hard to be positive.”

Perhaps that energy helped some of the Twins’ seemingly countless warning track flyouts throughout Friday’s game finally start tracking over the wall, too.

After Lewis set the example and amped up his teammates a week after his return from the IL, they finally busted out for a lopsided six-run eighth inning, highlighted by a Christian Vázquez two-run double and two-run blasts from Willi Castro and Buxton.

“You just knew he was missing,” Buxton said. “When he's back, it's electric. It's definitely different.”

“When he’s doing stuff like that, people want a piece of that energy, too, and they grab ahold of it,” Baldelli said.