Royce Lewis played in his 58th game of the season on Monday. It may not sound like a lot compared to, say, Willi Castro, who led off for the Twins in his team-leading 136th game of the year. But it is for Lewis, whose 2020 minor league season was wiped out because of the pandemic and has subsequently had every season since then interrupted by injuries.

As he plays into September, it’s been a process for him trying to learn on the fly what he needs to do to keep his body feeling good every day.

“I don’t know how many games I’m going on, but this is the latest in the year that I’ve gone on a stretch like this,” Lewis said. “The normal stuff that (Carlos) Santana’s done for 14 years now, he has all these tips and tricks to get his body right. But I don’t know, for my body, what to do yet.”

It’s been an evolving process.

He’s tried going in the sauna and cold tub before the game. He’s tried those recovery options after the game. He’s constantly making adjustments — and receiving plenty of input while he does so.

“It starts with about 2,000 people trying to tell you, ‘Oh, do this! Try this! Do this! What’s wrong with you? What are you doing?’” Lewis said. “Just because I hit singles now means I’m a different person, I guess. So that’s where it starts. Just trying to filter and try everything out and filter which one works, which one doesn’t.”

Lewis snapped the longest homerless drought of his major league career on Sunday with a big three-run home run in the eighth inning to propel his team to victory. Also in that game, he played second base for the first time in his major league career, another thing he’s learning on the fly.

The third baseman has not hesitated to express his discomfort at the position shift in-season. Because he has such limited experience at the position — he played in one minor league game there and a handful of Arizona Fall League games before starting to get his feet wet pregame in recent weeks — he said he was “terrified,” at second base on Sunday.

“It’s a new thing. So to add to, ‘OK, I’m trying to work on my body,’ and everyone’s talking to me,” Lewis said. “And people are talking to me because I’m hitting singles and they think I’m a bad hitter now. I’ve got so many things going on and now we’re going to add in second. … We have plenty of really good second basemen and I don’t want to mess up our defense just because we’re going to try something new. It’s not spring training or Triple-A for that matter.”

But despite Lewis’ trepidation at the new position, which he says is mostly because he does not want to mess up in the field during pivotal games while in a playoff race, manager Rocco Baldelli said he liked what he saw of the infielder there.

“I thought he looked good,” Baldelli said. “He made all the plays just the way that he’s made them in all the early work that he’s been doing and sometimes when you’re doing something new, it wakes you up, it keeps you on your toes, it gets you going.”

Buxton starts rehab

Byron Buxton’s return appears to be on the horizon.

The outfielder began a rehab assignment with Triple-A St. Paul on Monday, batting second and playing center field. Tuesday, the Saints have the day off and after that, Baldelli said they’d “see what is to come.” Buxton was 1 for 3 with a walk in seven innings played on Monday.

Buxton has been on the injured list since Aug. 15 with hip inflammation. If all goes well, it seems possible that Buxton could return later on in the Twins’ current road trip, perhaps over the weekend in Kansas City.

“We’re really getting there with Buck,” Baldelli said. “He’s been waiting to get back out there. This is good. It’s the first step, but it’s an important step. Hopefully everything goes well and we can see him back out there with us before you know it.”

Emmanuel Rodriguez promoted

One day in the future, the Twins hope that Buxton and top prospect Emmanuel Rodriguez will share a lineup in Minneapolis. Monday, they did it in St. Paul.

The 21-year-old outfielder was promoted to Triple-A after playing in 37 games for Double-A Wichita earlier in the year. He comes to St. Paul after finishing off a rehab assignment for a thumb injury that has sidelined him for much of the summer.

Before he got injured, the outfielder was hitting .298 with a 1.100 OPS and eight home runs during his time in Wichita. Rodriguez, whom the Twins signed in 2019 as an international free agent, is now the No. 21 prospect overall in Major League Baseball and is ranked third among Twins prospects, behind Walker Jenkins and Brooks Lee.

Briefly

Max Kepler was scratched from Monday’s starting lineup with left knee soreness. Kepler missed time for the same reason last week. … Magnetic resonance imaging taken on Sunday revealed that outfielder Manuel Margot has a mild right adductor tendon strain. The Twins placed Margot on the injured list on Sunday and he will be down for five to seven days from baseball activities to begin with. Margot, a former Ray, made the trip to Florida with his teammates and the Rays played a tribute video to him, prompting him to emerge from the dugout to tip his hat.

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