Royce Lewis ends his skid, Willi Castro homers twice as Twins rout A's 10-3

Phil Miller, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Jun 4, 2025

Published in Baseball

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

WEST SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — Willi Castro homered twice, Trevor Larnach homered once, and Byron Buxton added his ninth and 10th RBI in the past five days. Yet probably the most memorable performance, and certainly the most hopeful, came down to one swing of the bat.

Royce Lewis swung it, and the Athletics felt it.

Lewis reached for a curveball in the seventh inning Tuesday night and drove it off the wall in left-center field, scoring two Twins runs in their eventual 10-3 rout of the A’s at minor league Sutter Health Park. It was the Twins’ second straight blowout in the home of the Class AAA River Cats and the A’s eighth loss in a row.

More importantly to the Twins and Lewis, his double ended a two-week-old hitless streak at 0-for-32, the ninth-longest such drought by a position player in Twins history. Politeness requires we not mention that Lewis also owns the third-longest streak, broken not quite one month ago.

Anxiety, however, requires pointing out that Pablo López, who worked five difficult innings and allowed two runs, left the game after briefly warming up in the sixth inning. The righthander experienced right shoulder tightness, the Twins announced, though further details were unavailable.

The Athletics, stranded in their state’s capital until Las Vegas builds them a stadium or a Plan B is figured out, put up a fight against López, whose night was eerily similar to Joe Ryan’s the night before.

López allowed four hits, two fewer than Ryan, but like his teammate walked three A’s and struck out only four. The A’s put runners on base in each of the first seven innings but, doomed by a 1-for-9 success rate with runners in scoring position, twice left runners stranded on third and twice on second.

The Twins weren’t much better, but they had far more chances, going 4-for-13 with runners on second or third. And when Castro batted against lefthander Jacob Lopez, they scored without anyone on. Castro smacked long fly balls to nearly identical spots in the fourth and sixth innings, giving him four home runs in the past five games and 51 for his career. Tuesday’s blasts were Castro’s first from the righthanded batter’s box since last August.

The Twins also put together a couple of big innings without home runs, taking advantage of an overmatched A’s bullpen that is a big reason why they have lost 18 of their past 19 games and are 1-12 since May 1 at home.

One started, oddly enough, when Brooks Lee didn’t touch first base. There was a two-car pileup preventing it, with first baseman Tyler Soderstrom and pitcher Jacob Lopez scrambling frantically on the dirt, trying to hold on to the baseball. So Lee jumped over the fray and past the base, without touching it.

Didn’t matter. Umpire Carlos Torres apparently didn’t notice the missed base and ruled Lee safe. Lopez then walked Lewis, righthander Oswaldo Bido walked Harrison Bader, and Buxton drove both in with a single to center that Denzel Clarke misplayed, allowing Buxton to reach second. He has played four games since returning from a concussion and is 8-for-23 (.348) with two stolen bases and 10 RBI.

In the seventh, Larnach singled and Carlos Correa walked to set up another four-run inning. Ty France singled to load the bases, and Lee was hit by a pitch, driving in Larnach.

That brought up Lewis, fighting a slump that had limited him to nine hits this season. But he turned on that curveball from Tyler Ferguson and ended the skid.

The game drew only 8,487 to Sutter Health Park, the smallest crowd to see the Twins in a non-Covid year since 7,106 attended a May 18, 2022, game — appropriately enough, in Oakland.

_____