PHOENIX — It’s there, a constant reminder of the challenges he’s faced. It’s under the surface — literally worn underneath his pants — but its presence isn’t all that hidden. Four lines, two above the right knee and two below, press against the cloth. It’s the knee brace that Kyle Lewis hopes will help him play a full season for the first time in three years.
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The brace is new, as is the Diamondbacks uniform that covers his torso, but the question marks surrounding Lewis might as well be an heirloom. Drafted No. 11 overall by the Mariners in 2016, Lewis powered his way to the American League Rookie of the Year Award in the truncated 2020 season. He’s played in 54 major-league games since. He’s been concussed and he’s been sent down. That braced right knee has been bruised and undergone surgery. Entering this offseason, Seattle decided Lewis no longer fit its win-now roster.
That’s how he wound up here, taking batting practice at Chase Field with the Diamondbacks. In November, in the team’s first notable move of the offseason, Arizona acquired Lewis in exchange for up-and-down catcher Cooper Hummel. The deal’s low stakes were a sign of how quickly the slugger’s star had fallen — a once-ascendant franchise centerpiece traded for a depth catcher — but the Diamondbacks actually are making a calculated bet. For a small ante, Arizona bought itself a chance at tremendous upside.
“We felt like it was a risk,” said general manager Mike Hazen, “that we should take.”
After this spring, it’s not hard to see why. Lewis is only 27 years old. He was a first-rounder, a top prospect and a Rookie of the Year, labels he wore not all that long ago. He popped 11 home runs and an .801 OPS in 58 MLB games in 2020, and although he hasn’t been at full strength since, he’s approaching that status now. He feels healthy and strong and powerful. He looks it, too. In 11 games in the Cactus League, Lewis batted .429 with three homers, performing an awful lot like the lineup fixture he could never quite be in Seattle.
It was the type of spring that sparks excitement, the notion that a dormant talent could finally be back. But if the past several seasons have taught him anything, it’s not to measure himself against his past. If his 2020 season was the unforgiving standard by which his last several years were measured, gauging his present success against his recent struggles is just the flip side of the same coin. Lewis wants the 2023 season to be not a rebound but a “reset button,” allowing him to start fresh.
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His Mariners breakout is over. So are the years when he didn’t meet expectations, when his knee wouldn’t stop barking and when keeping him on the roster became not worth Seattle’s while. There is only today — what he can do with this body and this bat for this team.
Don’t call it a comeback.
“I don’t play for that,” Lewis says. “I don’t feel like there’s a reputation that I have to regain. It might just be a new one. A new chapter, different than the last one. Might be better, might be worse. But I feel like something’s going to happen.”
Those Seattle years were tough.
The highs had been so high, and so brief. Before Julio Rodríguez became a star, before the Jarred Kelenic hype train left the station, there had been Lewis. He’d burst onto the major-league scene in 2019, swatting six homers in 18 games and positioning himself as a franchise building block. Next had come his terrific rookie campaign, played in abbreviated fashion in front of cardboard cutouts as COVID-19 shut down the world.
But then a bone bruise in his right knee delayed his start to the 2021 season, and a torn meniscus suffered in late May put the same joint under the knife for the third time as a professional. Lewis tried to work his way back by the end of the season, but he bruised the knee once more sliding into a base. He played just 36 games that season. Last year, he didn’t debut until late May, only to suffer a concussion in his fourth game when a wayward pitch clipped him behind the ear. When he came back in June, he struggled, collecting just four hits in 46 plate appearances. He felt healthy enough to play only sparingly. On Aug. 10, with the Mariners chasing a playoff spot, Seattle sent him down to Triple A.
The Seattle Times reported that the move shocked Lewis at the time, although he certainly seems to understand it now. “My health was kind of questionable,” he says. “That was public knowledge.” But that didn’t make the reality of his situation any less unsettling. There didn’t seem to be a light at the end of the dugout tunnel. “I definitely had all the anxiety and the fear and all that,” Lewis says. “When you’re trying to play hurt and don’t know what you can do every day, that weighs on anybody.”
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The trade to Arizona brings completely different expectations. The Mariners might not have had a spot for a part-time hitter who couldn’t play the field with regularity, but the Diamondbacks do. A top mission for Hazen this offseason was to add power and get more right-handed, and Lewis checked both boxes. With young everyday players in the outfield, Arizona doesn’t need Lewis to log innings on the grass. Nor does the team need Lewis to play 140 games or log 500 plate appearances, which made it easier to bet on his oft-repaired right knee holding up.
“We felt like we needed to shoot for upside,” Hazen says, “whatever the medical risk was underneath the hood.”
That upside is the key. The Diamondbacks may not need a full Kyle Lewis resurgence, but they would hardly mind getting one. They played it cautiously with him in spring, sitting Lewis for the first 10 games on their Cactus League schedule for fear of overtaxing his knee. They planned for the possibility that he wouldn’t pan out, at least not immediately. Granted a fourth option year due to his injury woes, Lewis could have been stashed in the minors. Arizona had other players — like Emmanuel Rivera and Pavin Smith, who both have enjoyed big-league success — to whom it could have turned.
But when Lewis finally hit the field, he went off, batting .429/.529/.857 in 34 plate appearances. A few days before Opening Day, the Diamondbacks announced he’d made the roster. With a slew of tough opposing lefties on the docket to open the season, Lewis figures to be in the starting lineup quite a bit. Those who have watched him closely envision big things.
“I’m excited for him to get back out there and be healthy,” says assistant hitting coach Drew Hedman, “and get to remind everyone what he’s capable of doing.”
Diamondbacks first baseman Christian Walker remembers his first reaction when Arizona swung the deal for Lewis in the fall. “I was like, ‘Love that move. Love it,’” Walker says. Not only did it provide another much-needed power threat from the right side — Walker had been the only such threat in the lineup in 2022 — it netted the team a hitter that Walker thinks everyone else has slept on. Back in 2020, when Lewis “was balling out,” Walker would study his swing. Now, seeing it up close, Walker is no less impressed.
“I love the way his lower half works,” Walker says. “He’s always on time, he’s always in a good position.”
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Lewis isn’t the same hitter he was back then, nor does he strive to be. “I don’t aim for what I used to be able to do,” he says. Better to focus on what he can do in the present. “You always want to be the best version of what you’ve got,” he says. “I really buy into that.” And the best version of what he’s got has required tweaks over the years.
Lewis used to feature a big leg kick, but now he tries to keep things as quiet in the box as possible. Fewer moving parts means fewer chances for something to fall out of sequence. At 6-foot-4 and 222 pounds, he trusts in his natural strength to power his swing. The knee brace has helped with that. He didn’t wear one last year, and though his batted ball metrics were all comparable to 2020 — an average exit velo of 90 mph, a max of 110 mph, a barrel rate of 11 percent — he still felt limited. “Holding my back leg strong was something that I struggled with last year, being that it was hurting at certain points,” he says. Now, he digs in and feels stable.
It’s possible the Diamondbacks have latched onto Lewis at just the right time, precisely when his persistent injury troubles are finally fading into the past. On the other hand, the extra option allows them to send Lewis down if he struggles or no longer fits the roster well. If Lewis starts hot, it’s easy to see him becoming a lineup mainstay for the entire season. If he struggles, or if his playing time is inconsistent, the Diamondbacks could swap him out for someone more versatile. It’s somewhat telling that when discussing Lewis’ roster spot with reporters, Hazen brought up the opposing southpaws in the team’s immediate future. Those pitching matchups create a short-term need, not necessarily a long-term one.
Those are problems for a GM to solve, Lewis knows, not his. All he can do is play. What he knows for sure is that Thursday against the Dodgers, he’ll be introduced along with the other 25 men on the Opening Day roster. It’ll be his first such occasion with fans in the stands. The beginning of his not-a-comeback tour will start then. Lewis may not be looking to prove that he’s healthy and good again, but he wouldn’t mind convincing folks that he’s healthy and good, period.
“That’s just going to come with playing enough. You break that stigma,” he says. “It’s going to take a while. I’m looking forward to that challenge.”
(Photo: Nick Wosika / Icon Sportswire via Associated Press)