MLB trends: Royce Lewis doesn’t hit enough, Brewers relievers pitch too much and a weird 1-0 quirk

Memorial Day has come and gone and we’re now into the meat of the 2025 MLB regular season. The sample sizes aren’t especially small anymore, contenders and pretenders are establishing themselves, and we’re closer to the trade deadline than Opening Day. Here now are three trends worth keeping an eye now that the calendar has flipped to June.

The ongoing Royce Lewis slump

Not too long ago, Twins infielder Royce Lewis was emerging as one of the game’s top young hitters, and clubbing what seemed like a grand slam a series. The No. 1 pick in the 2017 draft battled so many injuries early in his career, including two ACL tears, though his .309/.372/.548 line and 15 homers in 58 games in 2023 was so tantalizing. If he could stay on the field, he’d be a star.

Fast forward to June 2025, and Lewis is mired in a hideous slump that dates back to last season. He took a .127/.195/.197 batting line into Tuesday night’s game and he was riding an 0 for 32 skid before a two-run double in the eighth inning. That came not too long after Lewis snapped an 0 for 36 that dated back to last season. 

Things have gotten so bad that Twins manager Rocco Baldelli dropped Lewis to ninth in the lineup this past Sunday. He is definitely wearing it right now. “I’m at a point where the hope is gone. I just do my job as best as I can. If I keep hitting the ball hard, they say it’s going to find a hole, but I haven’t seen it yet,” Lewis said last week (via The Athletic). 

When a player slumps this badly — Lewis is hitting .163/.214/.232 in more than 200 plate appearances dating back to last Aug. 18 — you figure his strikeouts have risen, but that is not the case here. Lewis has struck out in a career-low 15.6% of his plate appearances this season. He’s swung and missed at only 8.4% of pitches. The MLB averages are 22.0% and 10.7%, respectively.

Despite what he said last week — “If I keep hitting the ball hard, they say it’s going to find a hole” — Lewis is not, in fact, hitting the ball hard. His contact quality is trending down, has been since last season, and it is dragging his production down with it. 

This slump is not the result of a lack of effort. Lewis has tweaked his batting stance multiple times, including opening up to see the ball better and changing the position of his hands to get the bat through the zone quicker. He’s searching for a solution and nothing is coming. A 25-year-old player with star-caliber offensive tools has simply stopped driving the ball and stopped hitting in general.

“When you’re struggling, you want to be coachable and want to listen and do things, and that’s the fine line. How far is too far? You want to listen but also want to be able to stay within yourself,” Lewis said earlier this week (via the Minnesota Star Tribune). “At the end of the day, I’m the one in the box, I’m the one that’s going to have to do it no matter who tells me what to do.”

Lewis tweaked his hamstring in spring training and started the season on the injured list. He made his 2025 debut on May 6. Is it possible all these injuries have taken their toll? They’re almost all leg injuries too. Two ACL tears and strains of his quad, groin, and both hamstrings. Hitting starts with your legs. If you don’t have a solid base underneath you, you can’t drive the ball. 

To answer that question, yes, it’s possible the injuries have taken a toll and compromised Lewis’ ability to hit major-league pitching. That does not mean he’ll never recover and his career is over. It could just mean that he hasn’t adjusted to the way his body works now. It’s similar to a pitcher losing velocity. I can’t do things the way I used to. How do I make it work with what I have?

Whatever the reason, Lewis has been one of the worst hitters in baseball dating back to last August, and it has been a drag on Minnesota’s offense. That they’re winning without him contributing yet is a good sign. At some point, though, the Twins need Lewis to hit. He needs to help drive the bus and not be a passenger for the Twins to be the best version of themselves.

Milwaukee’s heavily worked bullpen

Isn’t every team’s bullpen heavily worked? That is just the game these days, though the Brewers and reigning NL Manager of the Year Pat Murphy have taken it to the extreme this year. Teams typically try to avoid using relievers back-to-back days, or at least back-to-back-to-back days, but no team has used relievers on consecutive days as often as the Brewers in 2025.

Here are the number of pitching appearances on zero days’ rest this season heading into Tuesday’s action:

1. Brewers: 55
2. Reds: 42
3. Padres: 42
4. Guardians: 40
5. Pirates: 39
…
MLB average: 33
…
29. Braves: 24
30. Mets: 20

The gap between No. 1 and No. 2 on that leaderboard is the same as the gap between No. 2 and No. 23. The Brewers already have more pitching appearances on zero days’ rest this year than the Braves did all of last year (53). Milwaukee is on pace for 146 such pitching appearances, which would be the most since the 2021 Giants (148).

Four pitchers have at least 10 appearances on zero days’ rest and two are Brewers: Abner Uribe and Jared Koenig. Nick Mears and Trevor Megill each have seven such appearances. Four of the 38 pitchers with seven appearances on zero days’ rest are Brewers. The Giants and Reds are the only other teams with even three pitchers who’ve made seven such appearances.

“Workload’s been a lot,” Megill admitted recently (via the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel). “It’s just kind of what we needed to do to keep the wins going.”   

Milwaukee has had to lean on their bullpen so much because they had so many rotation injuries earlier this year. Aaron Civale, Nestor Cortes, Tobias Myers, and Jose Quintana have all missed time with injuries suffered this season, and that’s on top of Robert Gasser and Brandon Woodruff still rehabbing from injuries suffered last year (or 2023, in Woodruff’s case).

Civale, Myers, and Quintana are healthy now and have reinforced the rotation. Also, Logan Henderson did great work filling in when he was pressed into duty. Now that the starting staff is getting healthy, Murphy has a chance to catch his breath a bit, and can ease up on his relievers. There is no doubt he wants to cut back on the number of back-to-back appearances.

Murphy and the Brewers did what they had to do to navigate their early-season rotation injuries and get their season back on the rails following a 21-25 start. Milwaukee had won eight straight prior to Tuesday’s dramatic loss, and they’re getting healthier. That’s good news for the bullpen, which has been worked hard. Hard in a way that is not sustainable across a full 162-game season.

The year of the 1-0 ballgame

Something rare happened two weeks ago and again this past weekend, and it completely flew under the radar. On May 17 and 18, and again on May 31 and June 1, multiple games ended with a 1-0 score on back-to-back days. Here’s the quick recap:

I suppose it is not surprising to see the Royals and Giants involved in multiple recent 1-0 games given their offensive issues. We were an Andrés Muñoz blown save away from a third 1-0 game on June 1 too. Muñoz allowed a run and blew a 1-0 lead in the ninth inning Sunday, though the Mariners rallied to walk off the Twins in the bottom of the ninth. Seattle won the game 2-1.

Anyway, before this season, there had not been multiple 1-0 games on back-to-back days since July 16 and 17 in 2016. It then happened twice in two weeks this year. That’s not all though. There have been way more 1-0 games than usual this season, and especially lately. There have been 14 1-0 games since May 15, or roughly one every 16 games. That’s almost one a night.

Is that a lot? Yes, that is a lot. Just as an example, the Yankees have already won three 1-0 games this season. They had three 1-0 wins from 2022-24 combined. Here are the league-wide stats on 1-0 games the last few years:

There were 33 1-0 games all season in 2019, and we’re already at 25 two months into 2025. MLB is on pace for 68 1-0 games this year, which would be the most since 2014 (69). That happened to be baseball’s lowest-scoring season since 1981. Only twice since 1993 have there been more than 55 1-0 games in a season (2010 and 2014).

So what’s going on here? Why are there so many 1-0 games this season? To me, this screams baseball being weird, and the sport’s inherent randomness run amok. There have been 25 1-0 games two months into the season and we might not see 25 1-0 games in the final four months of the year. This game does unexplainable things like that all the time. All the time.

That said, it very hard to hit these days. Pitchers have nastier stuff than ever, hitters see three or four different pitchers a night and all of them are optimized for that specific matchup, fielders are positioned better than ever, etc. It is really hard to hit now and when it’s hard to hit, it can be hard to score. That is surely contributing to all the 1-0 games to some extent.

Pitchers’ duels have taken on a new shape these days. Rarely is it the two starters going toe-to-toe for 8-9 innings. Now it’s the starter going 5-6 innings and two to four relievers handling the rest of the game. So, these 1-0 games may not have the same feel as those old school starting pitcher duels, but they are pitchers’ duels nonetheless, and there have been a lot of them in 2025.

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