CLEVELAND – He made an error while a teammate was pitching, and he struck out with the winning run on third base. And Royce Lewis could hardly stop smiling after an eventful Futures Game ended in a 2-2 tie Sunday.
"It was everything [he expected] and then some," the Twins' top prospect said of the experience of playing with the baseball's best soon-to-be-major leaguers. 'It was way better than I thought."
It appeared Lewis, the top overall pick in the 2017 draft, would have a quiet, just-happy-to-be-here sort of night at Progressive Field. He didn't enter the scheduled seven-inning game until the fifth, and he hit a hard grounder to left for a single. He even had a funny memory to share with fellow Twins prospect and Class A Fort Myers teammate Jordan Balazovic: A ground ball short-hopped him for an error while Balazovic was pitching.
"But he picked me up," Lewis said with a laugh. "He picked me up by picking off the runner."
Balazovic, a 20-year-old Canadian and 2016 fifth-round pick having a breakout season for the Miracle, threw 12 pitches, eight of them strikes, five of them 95 miles per hour. "That was awesome," he said of his quick inning. "It was nice to just go out there and throw strikes."
Suddenly, though, things got serious, especially for Lewis. With the AL down 2-0 in the bottom of the seventh, Angels Class AA outfielder Jo Adell walked, and Sam Huff, a Rangers Class A catcher, hit a home run to tie the score.
It also set Lewis up for a dramatic at-bat. A double and a single put the winning run on third base with two outs, and Lewis at the plate against Padres teenager Luis Patino. Lewis' mind-set?
"I was just taking it all in, whatever happened," he said. "It was really cool to look around and see everyone cheering for you, being in that spot and having an opportunity to possibly win a game."
He took a slider on the inside corner, and then another one low. Then Patino brought the heat: Three fastballs, all 99 mph. Lewis managed to foul the second one off, but the final one, up and in, he couldn't touch.
"I don't think I really truly saw a good strike," Lewis said. "Maybe next time a little better plate discipline."
The teams played one extra inning, starting with a runner on second base, but neither runner — in the AL's case, Lewis — could ever budge, and the game was declared a tie.
"It was so much fun," Lewis said. "I'll take a strikeout here rather than back home, where the stats count."
