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If you tried to rattle off a list of hot Twins players right now, you’d probably mention José Miranda in the second tier of solid hitters for this team. But what is interesting about Miranda’s renaissance is how little has changed from his disastrous 2023 season, when a bad start sent him back to the minors before a shoulder injury ended his season. In 2024, Miranda still lacks true power in his swing. He draws very few walks. And his strikeout rate has shown only marginal improvement.
Instead, Miranda is simply hitting more in the zone.
When players fix their approach at the plate, it usually has a lot to do with finding their sweet spots. When Carlos Correa struggled at first in 2022, he snapped out of it when he finally stopped chasing difficult pitches outside the zone. Miranda still swings at the same number of pitches outside the zone, though he has improved how often he hits them by about 5%.
Instead, Miranda has found more contact within the zone. In fact, Miranda has an in-zone contact rate of 90.5%, which puts him in the top 50 within the league for players with over 150 plate appearances and is the highest for any Twins player (except Max Kepler, who just caught up).
But the case becomes more complicated when we look at his heat maps. Miranda is focusing entirely on his sweet spots. Rather than simply swing if a ball is in the zone, Miranda now focuses on mostly hitting in the top of the zone:
Because he’s been a foul machine, Miranda is the best Twins hitter with two strikes, hitting .244/.261/.384. The closest regular is Carlos Santana, who is only hitting .214. Miranda has only let seven called third strikes go by.
How does Miranda take advantage of fouls? Let’s take a look at this at-bat in Houston against Ronel Blanco. The result here is a walk, but Miranda fouls off seven pitches to get there.
Blanco starts off with two pitches pretty far outside the zone, so Miranda let both of them sail by. That puts him into swing mode. He then gets a pitch just above the zone and right in his sweet spot, so he smacks it foul.
Blanco puts the next outside the zone, but quite close to Miranda’s sweet spot. He chases and makes contact, making it 2-2. Every pitch here, now, could put him away, so Blanco goes to the slider up in the zone, and Miranda takes a swing at it, throwing it into the stands. He then tries a fastball in the same position, hoping that the batter won’t catch up. Miranda makes contact anyways. He then tries the change up down in the zone. This time Miranda tries for his low angle swing but ends up topping the ball into the ground. Blanco tosses another slider away that Miranda refuses to chase, so he tries another changeup, just a little inside. But Miranda still catches most of it and throws it away foul.
Finally Blanco will throw it away, and Miranda will take his base. Five of the pitches he saw were two-strike offerings in the zone. And Miranda refused to let a single one of them go by.
While Miranda has improved, one wonders if this approach will last. Miranda has the highest “called strike” rate of his career, at 16.4%. And as pitchers adjust to his more controlled approach, they will certainly work on pinpointing those spots he prefers to avoid. It’s also affecting his power. Miranda is generally hitting harder and has a stronger barrel rate, but a significantly lower Hard Hit rate. That could mean that when pitchers find the right spot, they force him into more dribblers, rather than line drives. His swing doesn't seem able to sustain its speed down in the zone, the way it does when he gets the ball up at the belt or above.
More adjustments loom. That's always the case. But for now, Miranda has got his shot. And he certainly got his bat speed up on a pitch down in the zone Thursday afternoon.
What do you think about Miranda’s changed approach at the plate? Or do you think pitchers will take advantage?
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