Maybe he would have debuted in the big leagues last season, as he had hoped, and shown everyone why he was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2017 draft. Perhaps he would have been ready to slide in and take over starting duties near the beginning of the 2022 season.
Of course, the second part didn’t play out that way. Lewis’s injury means he hasn’t played in a minor-league game since 2019 (he spent the 2020 season at the Twins’ alternate site in St. Paul). It also means that he won’t be the Twins’ answer at shortstop this season — or if he is, it certainly won’t be at the beginning of the season.
So, the Twins enter the offseason — one with an incredibly strong free-agent shortstop class — in need of an answer at the position.
Andrelton Simmons was brought in on a one-year deal last offseason for his glove. And defensively, the four-time Gold Glover gave the Twins more or less what they were expecting. He was sixth among all defenders per Statcast at 16 outs above average and helped turn a position of weakness, defensively at least, into a strength.
But while he did help the Twins shore up their infield defense, he quite simply didn’t hit. Simmons finished the year batting .223 with a .283 on-base percentage and .274 slugging percentage. All three numbers — along with his .558 OPS and 57 OPS+ — marked career lows for Simmons.
When Simmons was out of the lineup, Jorge Polanco occasionally shifted back to his former position. At the end of the season, Nick Gordon got a couple of looks at shortstop, too, though the Twins didn’t seem to be too inclined to use Gordon there even though it was the position he primarily played in the minors.
The free-agent shortstop class is littered with stars. There’s Carlos Correa and Corey Seager. There’s Javier Báez and Marcus Semien. There’s Trevor Story.
None will come cheap, and all presumably will be looking for longer-term deals.
If the Twins believe Lewis — or even perhaps Austin Martin — will be manning shortstop for them one day in the somewhat near future, it would make more sense for them to instead look at another stop-gap type deal for the immediate present.
Martin, another top prospect, was acquired at the trade deadline from the Blue Jays and split time between shortstop and center field last year. It’s not clear that he’s going to be a shortstop in the future, though what position he’ll end up at in the majors still has yet to be determined. It’s possible, too, that Lewis eventually gets moved off the premium position.
Either way, the Twins will need an answer at short to begin the season. Among their internal options, Polanco would be the most capable, yet the Twins would suffer defensively if they moved him back from second base.
“We’re hopeful we have a couple guys who can play shortstop and be in the mix in the middle of the diamond,” president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said in late September. “I would say right now that anything is on the table. We have to put everything on the table, with where our team is and what it looks like. We have to be able to (look at) free agent considerations, trades or even internal guys that move around if we feel that’s the best place for them to go.”
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November 02, 2021 at 06:13AM
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Another stop-gap at shortstop for Twins? - Pine Journal
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