MINNEAPOLIS -- The Twins have called up their second-ranked prospect, infielder Brooks Lee, the team announced on Wednesday. He batted eighth and started at third base for his MLB debut against the Tigers.

Lee is ranked 13th overall on MLB Pipeline's Top 100 list, and he was a first-round Draft pick by the Twins in 2022. The move to bring him up comes in the wake of Royce Lewis suffering a Grade 2 right adductor strain that will require a stint on the injured list.

“​​I think more than anything, what we see is a really mature kid who has progressed exceptionally well at every level and is now ready to be a Major Leaguer,” Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said. “Obviously, he’s disappointed for Royce. He knows Royce. He wants to be a teammate of Royce’s for a long time … but right now, he’s going to try and do his best to step in and hopefully be a big part of our team going forward.”

• What to expect from Brooks Lee in the Majors

A switch-hitting shortstop, Lee moved rapidly through the Minors after a stellar career at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he had a .351 batting average and 1.073 OPS across three seasons. After being picked eighth overall by Minnesota in 2022, the California native started his first full Minor League season in Double-A in 2023, before finishing it with Triple-A St. Paul.

The 23-year-old Lee has seen some time at third base and second base in the Minors, so he can provide the Twins with multiple options in the infield -- a particularly important trait given that Minnesota has Carlos Correa manning the shortstop position.

Lee is known for making hard contact from both sides of the plate, though he showed more pop from the left side in 2023. He focused on improving his right-handed swing since the end of last season, and Lee noted on Wednesday that he’s happy with the results.

“It’s been great. It’s finally coming along. I have confidence in it,” Lee said. “As of right now, I’m more confident in my right side than the left. That’s just the way things are. I’ve spent a lot of time working on that swing and it’s finally coming to fruition.”

This season, Lee has an impressive .329/.394/.635 batting line in 20 games with Triple-A St. Paul, showing enough improvement for the Twins to feel he's ready for this callup. His arrival will accompany an IL stint for the 25-year-old Lewis, whose right adductor strain is the latest in a long list of injuries during his brief MLB career.

After the Minor League season was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, the top overall pick in the 2017 MLB Draft tore his right ACL in February 2021, also missing that entire season in the Minors. Lewis rehabbed hard and made his MLB debut on May 6, 2022, but he played just 12 games before tearing the same ACL again. That injury kept him sidelined for a full year before he returned to the Majors in May 2023, but he was limited to 58 games that season due to a pair of less significant injuries (oblique, hamstring).

And then finally, in 2024, Lewis made an MLB Opening Day roster for the first time, but suffered a severe quad injury on Opening Day that kept him out for more than two months.

Lewis has been an All-Star caliber player when on the field, hitting 27 home runs with a .945 OPS in his Major League career, but he's been limited to 94 games across his three seasons.

“He’s gonna handle it OK, I have no doubts about it,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “The initial disappointment is always a little bit worse than what it turns into in the coming days and weeks. … It doesn’t seem at this point like it’s going to be something that’s as long as the first muscle issue that he dealt with this year.

“So hopefully it’ll be a lot sooner than that. And he’s been a fast healer.”

It remains to be seen how much time Lewis will miss, but in the meantime, the Twins will get a chance to see what their No. 2 prospect -- who grades out as average or better in all five tools (contact, power, running, throwing, fielding), via MLB Pipeline -- can do. And with Minnesota currently holding a Wild Card spot, along with sitting six games behind Cleveland in the AL Central race, Lee will have no shortage of high-stakes games to prove his worth.

“He doesn’t have to come in and step in and hit fourth for us,” Baldelli said. “He just has to come in and prepare like he’s been preparing. He’s been doing a real nice job in St. Paul. So if he can come in and work, and get ready and play the way he’s been doing it, he’s going to do good things for us and hopefully the team keeps rolling.”