Spinal Trap: Back Injuries Cast a Huge Shadow Over Outlooks for Key Twins Hitters

In 2016, Ian McMahan wrote for Sports Illustrated that back injuries were on the rise in Major League Baseball. "The repeated twists, torques and dives of baseball make the lower back a weak spot for many," he wrote, noting that at that time 12% of all injuries in MLB were localized in this region. 

"According to Dr. Joshua Dines, assistant team doctor for the New York Mets and the author of a recent review article on back injuries in professional baseball," McMahan shared, "these problems are all too common among baseball players, primarily for the reason that baseball places a great deal of stress on the spine."

Dr. Dines puts it simply: “Swinging a bat is not a normal activity." And yet pro baseball players are asked to do it hundreds if not thousands of times over the course of a season, between game action, BP and the cages.  

We've seen the toll it can take. Alex Kirilloff fought through a depressing array of injuries and rehabs over the years – elbow surgery, shoulder surgery, multiple surgeries on the same wrist – but the back condition he's now facing proved to be the one that pushed him to step away. When they say "the straw that broke the camel's back," it's perhaps not a random body-part choice in the expression.

As many reading this can surely attest from experience, back injuries are pernicious. They tend to be mysterious in nature and difficult to accurately diagnose. Given the spine's central integration within our interconnected bodies, back issues often present as pain or discomfort in various different areas, contributing to the challenges of diagnosis. And just in terms of quality of life, back pain can be downright overwhelming in the misery it causes.

It is with this setup that I regretfully acknowledge: back injury concerns involving Twins players don't end with Kirilloff. I'm not trying to be overly dire but it cannot be ignored that this is a major factor in the team's outlook. Namely, can José Miranda and Brooks Lee rebound from the issues that plagued them in 2024?

Miranda was on a massive tear heading into mid-July, with a .950 OPS in his past 50 games when he landed on the injured list with a lower back strain, which was initially deemed minor. He came back 15 days later but was never the same afterward, slashing .212/.242/.301 with zero home runs in 45 games. In late September, with just two games remaining on the schedule, the Twins placed him on the injured list to close the season, once again citing a lower back strain.

To my knowledge, rest and rehab is the gameplan for Miranda this offseason. For the Twins, much hinges on him bouncing back physically and producing next year, because he could well be written in as the primary first baseman for 2025 as things currently stand.

Lee has a long history of his own back problems dating back to high school, when they cost him his entire sophomore season. Reservations held by teams relating to Lee's balky back were among the reasons he fell to the Twins at No. 8 overall in 2022, despite being viewed by many as the top bat in the class.

This year, a back injury surfaced in spring training for Lee ("the worst I’ve ever had it"), sidelining him out of the gates. Ultimately diagnosed as a herniated disc, it cost him the first two months of the season. 

“I’ve been dealing with the same thing — same pain, same flare-ups [since high school],” Lee said in June, after finally joining the Saints. “It feels like I have been trying to find that magic bullet and I haven’t found it yet. I don’t know if there is one; maybe a culmination of a bunch of different things."

“We’ll see if I ever figure it out," the 23-year-old said. "It will be a challenge, but I’m ready to take that on.”

Despite these rather ominous remarks, Lee seemed to relieve some of the concerns about his health by returning with a bang, dominating at Triple-A and then jumping to a hot start with the Twins coming off his big-league promotion. But the second half for Lee, like for Miranda, was a major struggle. He slashed .182/.233/.270 in his last 44 games, with a three-week stint on the injured list mixed in. 

In this case it was a shoulder injury, not a back injury, that led to his being shut down. But Lee just never seemed healthy outside of about a month-long stretch of the season, and that renders him a major question mark heading into 2025. Alas, the Twins have little choice but to depend on him, and Miranda.

There are no easy answers for this kind of thing. Undoubtedly the players and team doctors have laid out some plans to keep these issues in check going forward. A few months off can do wonders. 

As a matter of maintenance in the future, it might make sense to limit how many nonessential cuts these guys are taking outside of games. It bears noting that Lee, much Kirilloff, is a notorious lifelong "baseball rat" who was the son of a coach. These types are renowned for the amount of time they spend churning out reps and practicing their craft, which is a generally a positive but has downsides. I think back to that quote from Dr. Dines: “Swinging a bat is not a normal activity." 

No, but Miranda and Lee are abnormally good at it when healthy. Here's hoping we get to see more of that in 2025. I hate to say the weight of the offense's hopes is largely on their backs ... but, well, it kind of is.