Kyle Lewis Is On The Road To Recovery

SEATTLE—Forget adjusting to the grind of a pro baseball season. Kyle Lewis is now dealing with the day-to-day monotony of injury rehab from major surgery.

But in expected fashion, the Mariners’ top pick from the 2016 draft—No. 11 overall—is handling it with maturity and optimism.

On July 19, Lewis suffered a ghastly knee injury sliding into home in a game for short-season Everett. He suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament, torn medial and lateral meniscus in his right knee.

“You can feel the pop and the not-normal-feeling you would get from a tweak or sprain,” said Lewis, 21. “It was a definitely a different kind of feeling, a different kind of pain.”

At the time, he had hit .299/.385/.538 with eight doubles, five triples, three homers and 26 RBIs in 30 games. After a slow start, the Mercer product hit .364 with a 1.114 OPS over his final 20 games.

“I started to really turn it on and get back to feeling how I am supposed to play,” he said.

Lewis had surgery on Aug. 11 and is now mired in the lengthy, mentally grueling recovery process.

“For me, I just always think back on where I’ve come from,” he said. “Fighting through the adversity of coming from a small school and being overlooked and how I had to fight through that, I just relate it to this.”

Lewis reports to the Mariners’ complex in Peoria, Ariz., for his daily rehab. It’s a laboring process with incremental successes that don’t involve a bat or a ball.

“That’s the tough part,” he said. “There’s a lot of pain every day. You go into it knowing that you’ll have pain. It’s a trying time.”

The small victories have kept Lewis progressing. He can do light lifting in his lower half, while still working diligently on his core and upper body.

“I’m right on track of where I was expected to be at this point,” he said.

MARINADE

• Outfielder Boog Powell, who missed 80 games because of a PED suspension, was off to a hot start in the Dominican League. Through 26 games for Cibao he hit .263 (25-for-95) with 13 walks.

• Danny Hultzen, the No. 2 overall pick of the 2011 draft, became a minor league free agent after having a second shoulder reconstruction surgery in July. He re-enrolled at Virginia and will attempt a comeback in 2018.