JustWinBaby

Royce Lewis is no longer on the Twins big-league roster. The top prospect slashed .308/.325/.564 with the ballclub, a total impressive for most hitters in the game, much less one who just recently played his first professional baseball game in two-and-a-half years. But the Twins, whether so enamored by Gio Urshela that they couldn’t possibly DFA him, or doggedly set on having Lewis play shortstop no matter the cost, optioned him to AAA. While Lewis is now literally just 15 minutes away, let's dive far too deep into his offensive numbers in the majors. 
Plate Discipline:
Looking first at his O-Swing%, Lewis swung at 33.3% of pitches outside the strike zone, placing him 34th highest amongst qualified hitters in MLB, sandwiched between two Austins; Hays and Riley. There’s nothing inherently damning about that stat—O-Swing rate is more descriptive of how the meat is made rather than its quality; that he’s between a great hitter in Riley and a forgettable one in Hays makes that point by itself. Dave Cherman’s work allows us to understand that O-Swing rate is correlated with walks, meaning that Lewis did not show much of an affinity for taking a free base, which we knew.
The following important stat is O-Contact %—how much contact did Lewis make with pitches outside the strike zone? He put up a 70.0% mark, an elite total that would tie him with teammate Gio Urshela and Ozzie Albies for 24th in baseball. If you can believe it, making contact with pitches outside the zone is a great way to lower your strikeout rate (as pointed out by general baseball logic and Cherman’s work from above), and Lewis rocked this area. His otherworldly 12% strikeout rate is probably lower than it will be when his numbers stabilize, but he should still settle in with a punchout rate well below average (in a good way).
Finally, we’ll observe Z-Contact %. Zone contact rate, again using Cherman’s work to help, is correlated with strikeouts—a swing and a miss inside the zone means as much for the count as a swing and a miss outside of it. Lewis’s 88.2 % mark is well above average, sitting 54th among 172 hitters, right above José Abreu. Again, this number is hardly world-altering, but it reflects a hitter capable of putting the ball in play at the major league level. 
What is incredibly odd is that Lewis saw 56.8 % of pitches inside the strike zone, a total that would top the leaderboards if he qualified for them. MLB pitchers, rather than berate him with junk, thought the best course of action would be to hurl him enough strikes to make Jimmy Hoffa proud.

That level of zone-filling will certainly change whenever Lewis re-joins the team. 
Batted Ball Nuggets
Lewis popped an xWOBA of .347, good enough to tie him with known elite bats Gavin Lux and Andrew Knizer; Austin Hays isn’t far behind. Perhaps most impressive was his smoked “officer, I didn’t mean to kill him” 114 MPH line-out that could have cartoonishly blasted José Ramírez through brick walls if we didn’t live in such a dull reality. Instead, it was just an out. So it goes.
Not Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, or another big-meaty man, Pete Alonso, have hit a ball harder this year. 
The baseball gods gave Royce Lewis 139 pitches to sculpt an impressive resume from, and he did a solid B+ job, hinting at a tool collection full of noisy, consistent contact. Happenstance chose otherwise this time, but Lewis is guaranteed another shot at staying in the majors whenever the universe next carelessly chooses to injure an unfortunate starter. Hopefully, for that player’s sake, their nickname isn’t Wally Pipp.

When the offseason resumes, Minnesota's front office will be feeling pressure to address its extensive needs on the pitching staff. But as things stand, they won't be able to dedicate their full attention to this focus.
Because as things stand, the Twins don't have a starting shortstop. Nothing even resembling a feasible option or fallback plan. That is, unless they're willing to change their position on Jorge Polanco's ... position.
A ready-made starter at shortstop
Polanco was the starting shortstop on the American League All-Star team in 2019. Of his 596 games started in the majors, 470 have come at short. He played the position almost exclusively until last year, when he shifted across the diamond to second base.
No one would deny this was a successful pivot for Polanco and the Twins. He was never a defensive asset at short, but showed standout ability at second, where he looked increasingly comfortable and natural over time. Polanco was able to shake off his power-sapping ankle issues and recapture his excellent standard of offensive production. 
As a second baseman, Polanco got his career back on track and then some. He was the team's most valuable player.
In light of this development, you can see why the Twins would be reluctant to turn around and reverse course. As Dan Hayes of The Athletic mentioned when I posed the idea on Twitter, "It was not lost on [the Twins] that Polanco’s health was not an issue after early May and that he responded well physically to second base."
In Dan's well-informed estimation, moving Polanco back to shortstop is "somewhere around Plan M" for the Twins. And I believe it. But my question is ... should that be the case?
Clearly the Twins are not diametrically opposed to playing Polanco at short. He was their primary backup last year and started there 26 times. It's a question of how willing they are to shift him back into regular duties, as a temporary solution to a pressing problem. Maybe the M in "Plan M" stands for...
Making the best
This Twins front office prides itself on being flexible, adaptable, and opportunistic. Through this lens, when you look at all circumstances, sliding Polanco back to shortstop makes a great deal of sense.
Not only does his presence at second base leave a complete void on the shortstop depth chart – it also creates a logjam behind him at second. Luis Arraez is displaced to the point where he looks like a prime trade candidate. Behind him, young talents like Nick Gordon and Jose Miranda have nowhere to play regularly even if they're deserving. Top prospect Austin Martin also might be best suited at second.
Moving Polanco back to short for the time being would free up second base for one or several of these players to step in and receive valuable playing time. Meanwhile, it would prevent the front office from having to make a desperation-fueled move to address the shortstop vacancy.
What else is out there?
The high end of free agency at shortstop has mostly been picked over. The Twins aren't going to sign Carlos Correa and they're probably not going to sign Trevor Story. There are a handful of starting-caliber options remaining, in the Jose Iglesias and Andrelton Simmons mold, but they are not very inspiring. If just a few more names come off the board quickly when free agency fires back up, you're exclusively in backup territory. 
Trades are an option, of course. But that means giving up assets that you could be using to acquire pitching.
Finding a shortstop who's going to pair with Polanco, and give you a better keystone combo than Polanco and Arraez, will be very hard. I say that while being fully aware of the defensive shortcomings yielded by the latter arrangement.
If nothing else, moving Polanco back to short would be a temporary fix designed to buy time. Until Royce Lewis demonstrates that he is (or isn't) the franchise's future at shortstop. Until they've had a chance to sort through second basemen like Arraez, Gordon, Miranda, and Martin. 
Once a better shortstop option comes along, the Twins can move Polanco back to his preferred position across the bag. 
Is this kind of back-and-forth player shuffling ideal or optimal? No, but "optimal" has sorta gone out the window at this point. Polanco's a veteran with plenty of experience at both middle infield positions. He's answered the call whenever needed. If anyone can handle the disruption it's him, and he'd be doing the team a hell of a solid.
Sorting through solutions
Even with the limited remaining options to address shortstop, I'm not saying this is the best one. If the Twins can find a viable taker for Josh Donaldson, or get a really good offer for Arraez, that changes the equation by alleviating the infield logjam. Similarly, if they can swing a no-brainer deal for a shortstop like Paul DeJong, I could get behind that.
But if the "solution" to their problem is signing someone like Iglesias or Simmons as a stopgap, and then struggling to find at-bats for better players buried on the 2B depth chart behind Polanco ... is that really any better than pivoting back to the 2020 setup? 
The simplest solution to the front office's current problem at shortstop is right in front of their face. Are they willing to embrace Plan M?
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